Tracking Iraq’s 2025 elections and coalition building
This post was updated on June 16.
Iraq now has a partial government.
The country held parliamentary elections last November, and after a prolonged round of bargaining among the Shia Coordination Framework (CF) leaders as well as Kurdish and Sunni leaders, Iraq has a new president, a new prime minister, and a partial cabinet, with several key ministries still vacant, including defense and interior.
As new Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi works to fill the remaining portfolios, this tracker maps key developments in Iraq’s governance.
This post will continue to be updated as developments take place.
How Iraq got here
Iraq’s elections rarely produce an outright winner. Instead, coalitions and political negotiations determine who leads the country. After the election in November 2025, the government formation process took nearly six months. On April 11 this year, the Council of Representatives elected Nizar Amedi as president by a vote of 227 out of 249. After the CF coalition of Shia parties reached agreement on April 27, Amedi named al-Zaidi prime minister-designate and tasked him with forming a government within the constitutional thirty-day window. On May 14, the Council of Representatives approved al-Zaidi’s government program and confirmed an initial slate of ministers in a vote of confidence.
Iraq’s confirmed ministers
The ministers below were nominated by al-Zaidi and confirmed by parliament on May 14 under the constitutional requirement of an absolute majority. Of the twenty-three proposed ministers, fourteen were approved, five were rejected outright (interior, planning, higher education, housing and reconstruction, and culture), and four were not put to a vote at all (defense, labor, youth, and migration). Those nine portfolios remained unfilled as of mid-June, slated for a parliamentary vote after the Eid al-Adha recess, with al-Zaidi serving as acting minister for defense and interior in the interim.
Iraq’s cabinet: confirmed ministers
Fourteen of twenty-three ministries filled, confirmed by parliament on May 14, 2026
Source: Atlantic Council, Iraq Initiative. Colors encode the community of the nominating party; nine ministries remained unfilled as of mid-June 2026.
Background: the November 2025 vote
Two decades after the fall of Saddam Hussein, elections remain the formal mechanism of democracy in Iraq, but they have largely evolved into exercises in power redistribution among established political actors. The 2025 elections and the coalition-building process that followed tested whether Iraq’s political order could redistribute power without meaningful reform.
The CF retained dominance. As in previous cycles, the premiership was determined through post-election bargaining among CF, Kurdish, and Sunni leaders, a process reflective of Iraq’s political equilibrium, in which an informal elite pact trades reform for order and stability. Notably, outgoing Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani did not secure a second term; the premiership instead went to al-Zaidi as a compromise candidate after the CF’s leading contenders failed to command consensus.
Campaigns had been visible across Baghdad and the provinces, and the Independent High Electoral Commission reported turnout of roughly 56 percent. By one analysis, true participation was closer to 41 percent of all voting-age Iraqis, and 38.5 percent once invalid ballots are excluded, with total voters falling below 2021 despite a larger population. Persistent corruption, patronage, and record-level party spending allowed coercive political financing to become a decisive factor in mobilizing votes, eroding trust in elections as a path to accountability, and making financial leverage and control over state employment decisive. The boycott by prominent Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Sadrist Movement, which had won seventy-three seats in 2021 to become the largest parliamentary bloc, further reduced competition and narrowed participation.
Elections Law No. 9, passed in 2020 to address demands of local protests during the Tishreen Movement, reverted to larger provincial constituencies, favoring dominant parties and diminishing space for independents who gained traction in 2021. The outcome shaped Iraq’s balance of power more through elite negotiation than through popular mandate. For international observers and partners, particularly the United States, the main concern lies in whether the process reinforces stability or reignites factional contestation.
Election results
Note: This does not include smaller winning coalitions that are affiliated with the larger blocs listed above. For example, two separate coalitions in Anbar with a total of six seats are generally considered to be affiliated with Taqadum but have not been added to Taqadum’s tally.
What to know about the electoral system
Iraq’s parliamentary elections are governed by the amended Election Law No. 9 of 2020, which reinstated proportional representation using a modified Sainte-Laguë formula. The formula allocates seats by dividing each list’s vote total by a series of odd divisors (1.7, 3, 5, 7, and so on) and distributing seats among the political lists accordingly. Each of Iraq’s eighteen provinces serves as a single electoral district, with its share of the 329 parliamentary seats set by population. Once a list wins seats, those seats go to the candidates on that list who earned the highest number of votes. Iraqi law reserves 25 percent of parliamentary seats, eighty-three in total, for women, and sets aside nine seats for minorities: five for Christians and one each for Yazidis, Shabaks, Mandaeans, and Feyli Kurds. When a seat falls vacant, it passes to the next-highest vote-getter on the same list, or for a quota seat, from the same minority community.
While supporters of the current law argue that it strengthens stability and party cohesion, critics contend that the return to larger districts and closed party lists weakens independent candidates and concentrates power among established elites.
Key political players and alliances
What the parliament has looked like over time
Victoria J. Taylor is the director of the Iraq Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs.
Nibras Basitkey is the associate director of the Iraq Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs.
Daniah Jarrah is the program assistant of the Iraq Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs.
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The Iraq Initiative is driving policy-oriented programs and analysis that advance Iraq’s stability and sovereignty, regional integration, and democratic and economic development. It also aims to promote a strengthened US-Iraq partnership.
Image: Supporters attend an election campaign rally for the State of Law Coalition, ahead of Iraq's parliamentary elections, in Baghdad, Iraq November 7, 2025. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani
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