Knight Ridder’s Tom Lasseter reports some Iraqi election returns:
In final results released Friday for local elections in Baghdad, a city with large Sunni neighborhoods, Shiite cleric-led parties posted large numbers and Sunni tickets gathered relatively few votes.
The local ticket backed by the Shiite Dawa party got 694,800 votes; the ticket backed by the Shiite Supreme Council for Revolution in Iraq got 264,130 votes; and another Shiite group received 156,229 votes.
The slate headed by elder Sunni statesman Adnan Pachachi received just 22,170 votes; and the Iraqi Islamic Party, the main Sunni party in Iraq, got 17,558.
That would mean that in a city of approximately 5 million, 1,154,887 voted. If we assume 2.5 million were eligible to vote, that would mean the turnout in Baghdad was less than 50%.