More Iraqi election news

Ali writes (on Mohammed's new blog) today of a new site that he's found and a poll on the site (unscientific of course) that is apparently getting a lot of attention in Iraq.

While this survey may not be very scientific, I must say that I was not surprised by the results and would not be surprised if the actual results in the elections were close to it. It may be interesting to some people to see how much support the "Communist Party" had. This was not strange for me, as I remember very well that in the large anti-terror rally back in Dec./2003 the Communist Party was present there with the largest number of protestors and with the best organization and discipline.

The other notable result is that the "Islamic Party of Iraq" has till now 5.1% of the votes even though it's not going to participate and even though we keep hearing how all Sunni are going to boycott the elections but this poll shows that at least many of them still very interested in the elections. Not to mention that many Sunnis are expected to vote for Al Pachachi, the Nationalist parties and to "others". Yes the Islamic party won't participate but it's not logical to assume that as a result of that all those who intended to vote for it will boycott the elections. This becomes understandable if we know that the actual number of members and strong supporters of the Islamic party is way below the people who slightly favor it (I know a guy who was going to vote for the Islamic party but now wants to vote for Al Pachachi), and also because many Sunnis are afraid that if they don't vote the elections would definitely result in an overwhelming She'at majority, and that's something they would never be comfortable with.

I've heard it from many of my Sunni friends that they are concerned about the possibility that the constitution might be written by She'at and Kurds mainly, and to be more accurate they are concerned with the She'at part more. Most of them said they will vote for Pachachi and others are still considering but generally they said they will vote for a secular party. My belief is that the percentage of Sunnis who will vote will be considerably lower than that of any other group, but it will be still high enough to contradict the analysis of most experts, and we only have to wait for few days to see.

In just 24 more days the historic elections will be held.