Iraqi parliamentary election, 2018

Iraqi parliamentary election, 2018

← 2014 12 May 2018 (2018-05-12) 2022 →
All 329 seats in the Council of Representatives 165 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	44.52% ( 17.48 pp)
First party Second party Third party   Leader Muqtada al-Sadr Hadi Al-Amiri Haider al-Abadi Party Parties Sadrist Movement Iraqi Communist Party and others Parties ISCI old guard Badr Organization Al-Sadiqoun Bloc Al-Fadhila Islah Parties Dawa (Abadi) Ataa Movement Hirak INC Alliance Saairun Fatah Alliance Victory Alliance Last election 34 – – Seats won 54 47 42 Seat change 20 (from the Al-Ahrar Bloc) New New   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader Nouri al-Maliki Nechervan Barzani Ayad Allawi Party Parties Dawa (Maliki) IDP–IO Kurdistan Democratic Party Parties Iraqi National Accord and others Alliance State of Law Coalition None Al-Wataniya Last election 92 25 21 Seats won 25 25 21 Seat change 67   Seventh party Eighth party Ninth party   Leader Ammar al-Hakim Kosrat Rasul Ali Usama al-Nujayfi Party Parties Defectors from ISCI Most of Al-Muwatin Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Parties Al-Hadba Al-Hal IIP Alliance National Wisdom Movement None Decision Alliance Last election 29 21 23 Seats won 19 18 14 Seat change 10 (from Al-Muwatin-ISCI) 3 9
Colours denote which list won the most votes in every governorate
Prime Minister before election Haider al-Abadi Victory Alliance Prime Minister-designate TBD

Haider al-Abadi
Victory Alliance

TBD

Parliamentary elections were held in Iraq on 12 May 2018. The elections decided the 329 members of the Council of Representatives, the country's unicameral legislature, who in turn will elect the Iraqi President and Prime Minister. The Iraqi parliament ordered a manual recount of the results on 6 June 2018. On 10 June 2018, a fire at a storage site housing roughly half of the ballots from the May parliamentary election caught fire.

The elections took place six months after a non-binding independence referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan, in which 93% voted in favour of independence. In retaliation, the Iraqi government led by Haider al-Abadi closed Erbil International Airport, seized control of all border crossings between Kurdistan and neighbouring countries and, with the help of the Hashd al-Shaabi militias, militarily seized control of disputed territories, including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Nonetheless, Iraqi politicians called for dialogue with the Iraqi Kurdistan government and force them to formally annul the results.

The elections were originally scheduled for September 2017, but were delayed by six months due to the civil war with ISIS which ended in December 2017 with the recapture of their remaining territories. The largest Sunni Arab majority coalition, the Muttahidoon (Uniters for Reform), called for a further six month's delay to allow displaced voters to return to their homes. A Sunni Arab MP described holding the elections at this time as a "military coup against the political process". However, the Supreme Court ruled that delaying the elections would be unconstitutional.

Members of the Council of Representatives are elected through the open list form of party-list proportional representation, using the 18 governorates of Iraq as the constituencies. The counting system uses the modified Sainte-Laguë method with a divisor of 1.7 which is considered as a disadvantage to smaller parties. Eight seats remain reserved for minority groups at the national level: five for Assyrians and one each for Mandaeans, Yazidis, and Shabaks. However, the Council of Representatives voted on 11 February 2018, to add an extra seat for minorities, in the Wasit Governorate for Feyli Kurds, making the total number of parliamentarians equal to 329.