A senior leader of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Dawaa Party on Friday said he expected al-Maliki's coalition would win 100 out of 325 seats in the new parliament, DPA reported.
Walid al-Hilli's predictions came as the first early results from the March 7 vote began to trickle in. Early returns announced Thursday showed al-Maliki's State of Law coalition ahead in two provinces, and former prime minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqi List ahead in two others, with 30 per cent of the vote counted.
"We expect to get 100 seats in the next parliament," al-Hilli said in a statement, but warned against "prejudging the final outcome of the elections."
Al-Hilli said the estimate was based on al-Maliki's strong showing in early results from the cities of Najaf and Hilla released Thursday, and from unofficial statistics from eight other cities.
Judge Qassim al-Aboudi, a spokesman for Iraq's electoral commission, on Friday called on Iraqi political parties to "be patient, and not to release any statistics on the results of the elections, because the electoral commission is responsible for announcing the results when the counting, sorting, and data entry is completed."
Both Allawi's Iraqi List and the Shiite-led Iraqi National Alliance on Thursday claimed they would place second in the overall vote, based on their own monitors' unofficial tallies.
The commission was likely to release more early results on Friday, and to continuing releasing them until the final tallies were ready, most likely by the end of the month, al-Aboudi told the German Press Agency dpa.
Politicians from the three coalitions leading in the first, early results have said they do not expect to be able to form a government without striking alliances.
Such negotiations would remain in the early stages until the final results were announced, a spokesman for the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq (SICI) said Thursday.
The SICI, a religious Shiite party, is a key component of the Iraqi National Alliance, which early results showed as running a close second to al-Maliki's coalition in the southern provinces of Najaf and Babil.