Tracking Iraq’s 2025 elections and coalition building
This post was updated on October 23.
On October 15, parliament approved eleven ministers and three deputy prime ministers, completing a cabinet that had operated since May with nine portfolios in the hands of acting ministers. One post, migration and displacement, remains vacant after the parties failed to agree on a nominee. This tracker maps the shape of Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s government and the bargains that produced it.
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, who was nominated by Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, as president by a vote of 227 out of 249. After the Coordination Framework (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.
Five months followed with acting ministers in place, and on October 15 (with the 2027 federal budget due before parliament in the weeks that followed) the Council of Representatives convened with 261 members present and voted to complete the cabinet. Parliament approved eleven portfolios and three deputy prime ministers. It postponed the vote on the migration and displacement nominee, due to a dispute between the Christian Suyana bloc and the Babylon Movement over the ministry. According to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) an independent nominee was agreed upon with al-Zaidi, however Suyana’s objections prompted other parties to delay the vote on the KDP deputy prime minister nominee, Fares Brifkani, to maintain the balance of government posts.
Iraq’s confirmed ministers
The first slate of ministers 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 at the time, 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 until mid October.
The October 15 vote filled eleven posts and created several new ones, including a ministry of digital economy, governance, science, and technology; a ministry of tourism (after it was part of culture); and a minister of state for minority affairs. Counting the newly created portfolios, the cabinet now stands at twenty-six ministries, twenty-five of them filled. Parliament also confirmed three deputy prime ministers: Mohsen al-Mandalawi, Mohammed Ali Tamim, and Laith al-Khazali. Al-Khazali is a senior leader of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, which the United States designated a foreign terrorist organization in 2020, and he and his brother Qais al-Khazali were named specially designated global terrorists. The Treasury Department sanctioned both brothers in 2019 over the killing of protesters in Iraq.
Iraq’s cabinet: confirmed ministers
Twenty-five of twenty-six ministries filled. Fourteen confirmed on May 14, 2026; eleven on October 15, 2026.
Source: Atlantic Council, Iraq Initiative. Colors encode the community of the nominating party. Migration and displacement, reserved for the Christian quota, remains vacant after parliament postponed the vote. Three portfolios were newly created in October: digital economy, governance, science, and technology; tourism and antiquities, from which culture was separated; and a minister of state.
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 56.11 percent, with twelve million votes cast. That marked a sharp rise from 2021, when nine million Iraqis voted for a turnout of 43 percent. The comparison is not straightforward, as the commission calculates participation against registered biometric cardholders, a pool that contracted from 22.1 million in 2021 to 21.4 million in 2025, even as the population grew. Measured against all Iraqis aged eighteen and over, research firm IIACSS estimates true participation at roughly 41 percent.
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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