Shafaq News

Two decades after Iraqis voted in their first post-2003 parliamentary elections, one electoral behavior has proven more durable than the changing laws, alliances, and crises that have shaped the political landscape: whenever a sitting prime minister enters the race, his electoral list consistently rises to the forefront of the results.

From Nouri al-Maliki’s dominance in 2014 to Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s lead in 2025, this pattern has become a structural feature of Iraq’s political behavior — one that reshapes expectations about power, representation, and the balance between state institutions.

The trend did not emerge immediately. Iraq’s first elections in 2005 were driven by identity-based mobilization at a time when clerical influence and sectarian alignments dominated political life. Turnout exceeded 76 percent, the highest in the country’s history, and voter participation was shaped by the urgency of the moment rather than by executive performance. But once the first governments were formed, the center of political gravity began to shift. Instead of aligning with party platforms or parliamentary agendas, voters increasingly oriented themselves around the executive, especially the premiership.

In every electoral cycle, the shift was visible. In 2010, Al-Maliki’s State of Law coalition secured 89 seats. Four years later, while serving his second term, Al-Maliki topped the results with 92 seats and emerged as the clear national frontrunner. In 2018, Haider al-Abadi entered the race after leading the war against ISIS and still managed to place third with 42 seats despite a fragmented field. The only interruption to this pattern came in 2021, when no sitting prime minister appeared on the ballot. Voter turnout fell to 41 percent — the lowest since 2005 — and the results benefited Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement, which emerged as the largest bloc in a highly fractured environment.

With the return of a premier-led list in 2025, the behavior reappeared: Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s Al-Ima’ar wal-Tanmiya coalition advanced to the top of the preliminary results, securing around 46 seats nationwide.

The 2021 elections serve as the clearest stress test of this pattern. Without a prime minister competing, voters distributed their loyalties across opposition figures, protest-aligned independents, and coalitions, producing no dominant list and revealing how central the executive has become to voter orientation. Rather than undermining the theory, the 2021 exception reinforces it.

According to Washington-based political analyst Ramadan al-Badran, this steady shift toward prime-minister-centered voting reflects a deeper institutional imbalance. He tells Shafaq News that parliaments never managed to build a meaningful or visible relationship with citizens, while the executive retained its prominence through service delivery, administrative decisions, and its role in everyday governance.

Over time, this created a public perception that authority, responsibility, and evaluation all flow through the prime minister’s office. Al-Badran warns that this dynamic weakens the intended balance of power, explaining that voters increasingly “judge the political process almost entirely through the premiership,” while legislative influence recedes and rural constituencies grow more marginalized in national strategies.

Research from Chatham House and the Carnegie Middle East Center supports this assessment, noting that successive governments have relied heavily on public-sector hiring, municipal projects, and short-term service campaigns, all of which consolidate visibility in the executive rather than in parliament or political parties.

Institutional explanations, however, account for only part of the behavior. Iraqi social researcher Wali al-Khafaji points to a psychological dimension shaped by decades of authoritarian rule, state collapse, and violent transitions. He tells Shafaq News that Iraqi society tends to gravitate toward familiar authority figures, especially in uncertain environments where institutional trust remains low. This tendency aligns with UNDP findings on post-conflict political behavior, which show that voters often choose continuity even when they distrust the broader system.

Al-Khafaji notes that for many Iraqis, especially in Shia-majority provinces during the 2025 elections, al-Sudani represented the most stable option in a crowded and contested field.

Read more: Iraq’s 2025 Elections: Old lines, new margins

Yet the intensity of this pattern varies across Iraq’s regions. In the Shia-majority provinces — such as Babil, Basra, Dhi Qar, and Maysan — the preference for strong federal executives is more pronounced, and these provinces carry the largest seat allocations, amplifying the effect.

In Sunni-majority areas like al-Anbar, Saladin, Diyala, and Nineveh, the pattern is weaker. Local leaders such as Mohammed al-Halbousi, Khamis al-Khanjar, and Muthanna al-Samarrai often eclipse the role of the prime minister, and fragmentation remains a defining characteristic of Sunni politics.

In the Kurdistan Region, an entirely different logic applies: voters align with entrenched party structures rather than federal executives. The Kurdistan Democratic Party dominated Erbil and Duhok, while the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan retained its traditional strength in al-Sulaymaniyah despite growing competition from New Generation and the Kurdistan Islamic Union.

Several additional factors reinforce the trend. Sitting prime ministers benefit from incumbency machinery — visibility in national media, control over service ministries, the ability to launch projects rapidly, and access to patronage networks that shape public perception. Their opponents, meanwhile, rarely form unified or coherent coalitions. Fragmentation weakened rivals in 2018, repeated itself in 2021, and resurfaced again in 2025. The electoral system also plays a role: the 2023 amendments restored the Sainte-Laguë proportional formula, which tends to favor larger, established lists, almost always including the premier’s coalition.

External actors, such as Iran’s influence in shaping Shia alliances, and Western preferences for stability-oriented executives, create environments that structurally advantage incumbents.

These overlapping dynamics point to a broader concern. When elections repeatedly elevate the sitting prime minister’s list, democratic alternation becomes limited, and parliamentary authority erodes even when legislative activity remains high. Policies and political programs are overshadowed by personal networks, clientelism, and executive visibility. Over time, the system risks drifting toward what comparative politics scholars describe as “competitive authoritarianism” — a framework where elections continue to take place, but the rotation of executive power becomes rare, institutional checks weaken, and informal mechanisms hold more sway than formal democratic rules.

Read more: Failure or feat? A bold assessment of PM Al-Sudani's tenure

Unless Iraq strengthens its party structures, develops program-based politics, and creates institutional safeguards that rebalance the relationship between the legislative and executive branches, the cycle is likely to continue well beyond 2025.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.