With the full result of Iraq's election still not known, it is pretty clear that the United Iraqi Alliance, the Islamist-inclined and clergy-backed coalition of Shia-led parties which claims Grand Aya-tollah Ali al-Sistani as its chief mentor, has won with a landslide, perhaps even taking over half the National Assembly's 275 seats. In Iraq's southern half, the alliance may have won as much as three-quarters of the vote, though that figure will dip, as a proportion of the national total, when full results from mixed cities such as Baghdad and from the Kurdish north come in.
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