2014 Iraqi parliamentary election

The open list form of party-list proportional representation, using the governorates as the constituencies, is the electoral system used. The counting system has been changed slightly from the largest remainder method to the modified Sainte-Laguë method due to a ruling by the Supreme Court of Iraq that the previous method discriminated against smaller parties. Seven "compensatory" seats that were awarded at the national level to those parties whose national share of the vote wasn't reflected in the seats won at the governorate level have been allocated to individual governorates. Eight seats remain reserved for minority groups at the national level: five for Assyrians and one each for Mandaeans, Yezidis, and Shabaks.[2][3]

The campaign was expected to focus on competition within the three main religious and ethnic communities: Shi'ite Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Kurds. While under the Constitution of Iraq the head of the largest coalition has the first call to become prime minister, in a precedent set following the 2010 election, a revised coalition can be formed following the election. This reduced the incentive for parties to form broad coalitions prior to the election. So in November 2011, Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission approved 276 political entities to run in the elections, including a number of coalitions.[4]

Shi'ite Arabs were split between the Prime Minister's State of Law Coalition, the Sadrist al-Ahrar Bloc, and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq backed al-Muwatin coalition. The former secular, non-sectarian Iraqiya bloc – 2010 the strongest force elected into parliament – had broken apart into Usama al-Nujayfi's Sunni regionalist Muttahidoon coalition, Ayad Allawi's National Coalition al-Wataniya, and Saleh al-Mutlaq's al-Arabiya Coalition.[5] And the two prominent Kurdish parties, Masoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), were joined by a third Kurdish party, the Movement for Change (Gorran) headed by Nawshirwan Mustafa.

As members of the security forces voted on Monday 28 April, six different polling stations were hit by suicide bombers, leading to at least 27 deaths. Insurgent group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has threatened violence against Sunni Muslims who vote in the election.[6]

The first session of the new parliament began on 1 July where all 328 members took oath to carry out their legal tasks and responsibilities devotedly and honestly and preserve the independence and sovereignty of Iraq, and safeguard the interests of its people. The constitution mentions that in the first session, the parliament has to elect a Speaker for the House along with two deputies. This didn't happen as some Kurdish and Sunni Arab MPs boycotted the session causing a lack of quorum since they did not agree on a single candidate. The next session took place on 13 July and brought about a consensus for the post of Speaker after it was announced that Salim al-Jabouri was the candidate.[12] After Salim al-Jabouri was voted as Speaker of the House, the parliament voted for Fuad Masum as President who in turn asked Haider al-Abadi to form a government on 11 August. The government was formed on 8 September 2014 with most parties being part of the new government.