Iraq: Elections Widely Perceived as a Success

As millions of Iraqis braved scattered attacks and flooded the polls over the weekend to vote in the country’s second parliamentary elections, politicians and pundits alike hailed what Steven Lee Meyers of the New York Times described was “arguably the most open, most competitive election in the nation’s long history of colonial rule, dictatorship and war.” President Obama praised the “milestone” elections; Marc Lynch asserted that they “went off remarkably well”;  and Philip J. Crowley, assistant secretary for public affairs, lauded the “impressive number of people [who] went to the polls.”

In reality, 62.4% of Iraq’s 19 million eligible voters participated in the elections, which was down from the 79.6% who turned out for the first parliamentary elections in 2005 but was higher than the January 2009 provincial elections. Seeking to explain the decrease in voter participation between 2005 and 2010, one analyst reasoned that large numbers of Iraqis have emigrated since the first election and that “overseas, it is not as easy to vote.” At the same time, a larger percentage of Sunni voters went to the polls on Sunday than had gone in the 2005 election, which at the time was under a country-wide Sunni boycott. The New York Times’ Anthony Shadid surmises that this increase reflects a growing Sunni desire for political relevance but also a burgeoning distrust of Shiite leaders and concerns about meddling Iranian influence.

Despite fears of post-election sectarianism, The Atlantic‘s Max Fisher viewed the elections themselves as “successful” and sought to explain why. He quotes Peter Beinart of the Daily Beast who credits the presence of 90,000 American troops for overseeing the elections. This stands in slight contrast to an assessment by Lynch, who attributes the “relative calm election day” to the Iraqi security forces.

Nonetheless, press coverage in the Arab world of the historic elections appeared to have been quite minimal. As Nadia Taha points out, “while newspapers from the Arab world made mention of the elections, many led their Web sites with news of the weekend’s fighting in Jerusalem.”