Overview
- Security personnel and displaced Iraqis began casting ballots on Sunday, with 1.314 million members of the forces and about 26,500 displaced voters eligible across 809 centers, as polls ran from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. under an electoral silence period.
- The general vote is scheduled for Tuesday, with 7,768 candidates competing for 329 seats, a quarter reserved for women and nine for minorities, and no polling stations operating outside the country.
- Only 21.4 million of roughly 32 million eligible Iraqis updated voter cards, signaling continued registration weakness after the post-2003 record-low turnout in 2021.
- The Sadrist Movement is boycotting, with Sadr City showing calls to abstain, while reformist groups born of the 2019 protests remain fragmented and underfunded.
- Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani is viewed as a frontrunner yet faces a difficult path in post-vote bargaining given splits within the Shiite Coordination Framework over the Popular Mobilization Forces, heightened Israel–Iran tensions and U.S. pressure on militias, and Baghdad’s push to draw Chevron and ExxonMobil back as a stabilizing economic anchor.