Leading blocs in neck-and-neck race

Baghdad:  Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and his main rival Eyad Allawi were projected yesterday to win the same number of seats in Iraq's parliament in a dramatic tightening of the country's election race.

Al Maliki's State of Law Alliance and Allawi's Iraqiya bloc were both on pace to garner 87 seats in Iraq's Council of Representatives, with less than 9,000 votes separating the two nationwide, according to an AFP projection based on 79 per cent of ballots cast.But votes cast outside Iraq and during special voting for the security forces, the sick and prisoners have not yet been tabulated by Iraq's election commission, and could yet dramatically affect the outcome.

The election, the second since Saddam Hussain was ousted in the US-led invasion of 2003, comes less than six months before the United States is set to withdraw all of its combat troops from Iraq.

Partial results

State of Law leads in Baghdad, Iraq's largest province and accounting for more than twice as many parliamentary seats as any other, as well as in the oil-rich southern province of Basra, the third biggest in the country. It is also ahead in five other mostly Shiite southern provinces, but failed to finish in the top three in all but one of Iraq's Sunni-majority provinces.

Allawi's Iraqiya coalition, on the other hand, was leading in four provinces, including Iraq's second biggest province Nineveh. It was also neck-and-neck for the lead in a fifth, Kirkuk.

He also placed in the top three in six predominantly Shiite provinces where Al Maliki came either first or second.

Overall, Allawi held a slim lead in the nationwide vote count, with 2,102,981 votes cast in Iraqiya's favour, compared to 2,093,997 for the State of Law alliance, a difference of just 8,984 votes.

The Iraqi National Alliance, a coalition led by Shiite religious groups, is set to come in third with 67 seats, while Kurdistania, comprised of the autonomous Kurdish region's two long-dominant blocs, is projected to have 38.

No other group is projected to win more than 10 seats. Fifteen of the 325 seats in parliament are either compensatory or reserved for minorities and were not included in the projection.

Iraq's proportional representation electoral system makes it unlikely that any single group will clinch the 163 seats needed to form a government on its own, and protracted coalition building is likely.

Both State of Law and Iraqiya have said they have begun talks with rival blocs to form a government.