During the Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary elections on October 20, the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), according to preliminary results, secured 39 seats with 809,197 votes, while its rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), won 23 seats with 408,141 votes, after a fierce election campaign between the ruling parties. The election had been delayed since 2022 due to disputes between the KDP and PUK.
The PUK ran a campaign challenging the KDP and focused on gaining votes in Erbil. “We will overthrow the corrupt and filthy authority,” PUK President Bafel Jalal Talabani said during the campaign. This although the PUK was part of previous cabinets. In response, KDP Vice President Masrour Barzani, underlined that the PUK could not overthrow the KDP’s authority. “Their motto is we will eliminate it, stop it, destroy it, make it bad, spreading disappointment among our people. Our answer to all of them is ‘they cannot,’” he said.
Due to the fierce campaign, both parties effectively energized rival supporters, while dissatisfied voters backed the opposition New Generation Movement. Both the KDP and PUK substantially increased their numbers of votes compared to 2018 (when the PUK received 319,219 votes and the KDP 688,070 votes), although four opposition parties alleged fraud and vote tampering.
“The results reinforced the dominance of the two ruling parties within their respective spheres of influence, while the main opposition party, New Generation, experienced a surge—largely at the expense of other opposition groups,” Renwar Najm, a London-based Kurdish journalist, told me.
Although the KDP won double the number of votes as the PUK, it actually lost five seats due to the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court’s ruling lowering the Kurdistan Parliament’s seats from 111 to 100. The decision also changed the single constituency to a multiconstituency system, and reduced minority quota seats from eleven to five, while giving two of these to Sulaymaniyah, where there are almost no Christian or Turkmen minorities.
According to the online news outlet Peregraf, the KDP had a total of 56 seats in the previous Kurdish parliament, due to the fact that the eleven quota parliament members supported the KDP. The PUK had opposed this quota system and successfully challenged it in the federal supreme court. Now the KDP only has 42 seats, including the three quota seats from Duhok and Erbil. The PUK also won two quota seats, in alliance with the Iran-backed armed group leader Rayan al-Kildani (who has been sanctioned by the United States), for a total of 25 seats.
The Kurdistan Region previously had one electoral district, but the federal supreme court divided it into four constituencies—Halabja, Erbil, Duhok, and Sulaymaniyah. This disadvantaged the KDP and benefited the PUK, which gained three seats compared to 2018, while the KDP lost five seats.*
Hoshyar Zebari, a senior member of the KDP’s Political Bureau, told me that the KDP is still satisfied with the results. He observed, “We increased our popular vote by almost 200,000 votes, which was a big jump. But the current electoral system that has been designed, has denied us four or five seats. To be honest with you, if [the results were derived] just by our popular vote we would have had 44 or 45 seats [without quota seats].”
Mohammed Salih, a non-resident senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, said the Iraqi federal supreme court’s rulings were “done to prevent a firm KDP majority. Hence, while KDP had almost twice the votes of the second party, in other words the PUK, its seats are only 70 percent more.”
The new political landscape could lead to a lengthy government formation process, since the PUK most likely will not accept the same allocation of government positions as in previous cabinets. Until now, in the Kurdistan Regional Government, the PUK has held the deputy prime minister and parliament speaker positions, while the KDP holds the posts of president and prime minister. In Baghdad, the PUK has held the Iraqi presidency position since 2005, but the KDP competed for the position in 2018 and 2022.
“The PUK’s recent campaign has emphasized diminishing the KDP’s dominance,” Kamaran Palani, a research officer at the London School of Economics’ Middle East Center, told me. “The PUK is not only aiming for more senior positions but also for key posts, such as those it held between 2009 and 2013, when a PUK member served as prime minister for two years. However, it is unlikely that the KDP will concede this, though the KRI (Kurdistan Region) presidency may be negotiable.”
The opposition New Generation Movement—which won fifteen seats with 290,991 votes—is unlikely to join the government. “Any attempt by the New Generation to join the government would be politically self-destructive, much like what happened to the Gorran movement,” journalist Renwar Najm noted. Gorran joined the government, and lost all its seats in 2021, gaining only one seat in the last elections. “New Generation’s support largely stems from its refusal to participate in the government or cooperate with the two ruling parties, whether it is PUK or KDP,” the journalist added. New Generation leader Shaswar Abdulwahid stated on October 24 that they will not repeat the mistakes of “some parties nor sell the people’s votes.”
Therefore, it is likely that the KDP and PUK, at some point will form a government. “I think the outcome of the election shows again there is a need for some coalition [government], even if it’s not broad-based, but fully inclusive of everybody,” senior KDP official Zebari, told me. He added that there would be tough negotiations. “But I think the overall attitude is to reach out to all, to see what we can do to form a government as soon as possible, so as to not allow for a long government formation [process].”
Saadi Ahmed Pira, the PUK spokesperson, added that the PUK’s “door to dialogue is open to all the parties. The PUK will meet other parties starting from next week. The final and official outcome of the elections are not announced yet. Once we have those, there will be dialogue on the foundation of the polls and government formation.”
According to journalist Najm, all indications suggest forming a new government will be prolonged and challenging, given the deep-seated hostility between the KDP and the PUK during the campaign. “Despite this, both parties understand that governing the region without mutual cooperation is impossible, and eventually, they will need to make concessions to each other,” he said.
Mohammed Salih added that without both the PUK and KDP in the next cabinet, the governing process in Kurdistan would be chaotic and challenging. “This requires the KDP to make compromises, and show flexibility, to be able to create a government that would have a strong mandate to negotiate and deal with Baghdad and be able to govern reasonably successfully, given the myriad of challenges at play.”
*The last sentence in this paragraph was deleted, because it cited a figure that was inaccurate.
