Kirkuk will send thirteen lawmakers to Baghdad next month—twelve through Iraq’s modified Sainte-Laguë proportional system and one Christian quota seat elected on a separate roll. With two weeks remaining, the contest is poised to hinge on a handful of late-seat quotients measured in just a few thousand votes. The electorate is substantial: 958,141 voters are on the biometric register. In crude terms, a seat “costs” around 74,000 votes at full turnout and roughly 37,000 at 50 percent turnout. But under the 1.7 divisor, the decisive figure is the twelfth and final winning quotient after party totals are divided by 1.7, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and so on. In recent tallies, that final line has hovered just above twenty thousand votes; in the 2023 to 2025 mechanical rerun it sits at approximately 20,509.

The clearest baseline comes from the December 2023 provincial elections. If those vote totals are re-applied to this year’s parliamentary formula—a single governorate-wide district using the modified Sainte-Laguë divisors—the distribution is clean: the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) converts 157,649 votes into four seats; the Arab Alliance 102,545 into three; the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF) 75,166 into two; “Al-Qiyada/Leadership” 61,435 into one; the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) 52,278 into one; and Al-Uruba 47,919 into one. Everyone else—including New Generation on 25,910 and “Kirkukna/Our Kirkuk” on 22,701—falls short of a general seat. In this ladder, the twelfth mandate rests on the Arab Alliance’s fifth divisor at roughly 20,509 votes. Any quotient that rises above that line—or any slip that drags it below—flips the seat.

The Arab field remains the most crowded. Seven Arab lists are on the ballot: the Arab Alliance, aligned with Khamis al-Khanjar; Taqaddum, led by Mohammad al-Halbusi; Azm, led by Muthanna al-Samarei; Hasm, led by Defense Minister Thabit al-Abbasi; the National Tribal Movement; Imran; and Rafaa al-Watani. Two mid-tier vehicles from late 2023, Al-Uruba and Al-Qiyada, have effectively folded into Taqaddum, a consolidation that matters under Sainte-Laguë math because it strengthens Taqaddum’s quotient ladder and increases the likelihood of a third Arab seat if discipline holds.

The Arab Alliance, the largest single Arab vehicle, enters this election diminished. It has lost its two strongest mobilizers. Rakan al-Jubouri—one of Kirkuk’s most popular Sunni Arab politicians, nationally aligned with Khanjar and long the acting governor—was disqualified under the new eligibility rules that swept dozens of senior figures nationwide; the alliance responded by nominating his son. Khalid al-Mafraji, the alliance’s second-strongest vote-getter, was also disqualified. Their local patronage networks remain, but the absence of their names on the ballot introduces real risk exactly where the 2023 arithmetic sat on the margin: the third Arab quotient.

Beneath the party labels, tribal networks drive turnout and vote transfer. Rakan al-Jubouri is a leading figure in the al-Jubur tribe and is tied to Khamis al-Khanjar’s national current. Wasfi al-Asi, head of the Obeidi tribe, is closely aligned with Mohammad al-Halbusi and Taqaddum. A third heavyweight, the Al-Nuaim tribe, leans toward Azm, which is fielding a prominent tribal candidate, Saddam Al-Nuaimi. What looks like a clash of party brands is often a contest among these tribal blocs and their national patrons. That is why the Uruba–Qiyada merger into Taqaddum matters twice: it consolidates mid-tier votes into stronger early quotients under Sainte-Laguë and channels Obeidi-aligned mobilization under one banner, countering the Arab Alliance’s effort to transfer Rakan’s personal vote to his son.

Among Kurdish parties, five lists are registered, but only three are realistically positioned to win seats. PUK enters the race with a commanding 2023 base and the advantages of incumbency. It currently leads the local administration, and the sitting governor, a PUK figure, is running on the party’s parliamentary slate — the kind of name recognition that can deliver a few thousand additional votes in precincts already inclined toward the party. On arithmetic alone, PUK is likely to get four seats and has a credible path to a fifth. One route is straightforward: lifting its total to around 185,000 votes, enough to push its ninth-divisor quotient over the ~20,500 threshold. The more likely route, however, is more modest: a five to six percent bump in support, combined with intensified Arab competition at the lower end of the ladder, which would lower the twelfth-seat bar and allow PUK’s fifth quotient to slip past.

The KDP stands on a one-seat floor with its 2023 performance. To secure a second seat, it would need an additional 9,000–10,000 votes or for a mid-tier Arab list to falter. New Generation, which polled 25,910 votes in December 2023, remains more spoiler than contender under the 1.7 rule unless it nearly doubles its vote share. Its position has weakened further since its president, Shaswar Abdulwahid, is currently imprisoned in Sulaimani—a development likely to drag its Kirkuk vote below 20,000. The other two Kurdish lists—the Kurdistan Socialist Party and the People’s Front associated with Lahur Sheikh Jangi—are marginal, each unlikely to exceed a thousand votes.

The Turkmen field is the other pivotal arena. It is divided between the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF), traditionally close to Ankara and the main vehicle for Sunni Turkmen, and the Turkmen Salvation/Rescue alliance, the 2025 banner of the Shiʿa Turkmen current that won a parliamentary seat in 2021 but, under the “Kirkukna” label, polled 22,701 votes in the 2023 provincial race and won none. This history gives Salvation both a base and a target. Under the current ladder, its first seat requires around 35,000 votes if the last-seat bar holds, or about 31,000 if Arab lists fragment and the threshold softens. A second seat is mathematically remote. By contrast, the ITF’s first and third divisors off 75,166 votes sit comfortably above the late-seat line and should hold absent an unexpected slide.

Regional alignments overlay, but do not dictate, these local sums. The Arab Alliance of Khamis al-Khanjar and Rakan al-Jubouri, the ITF, and the KDP are broadly aligned with Turkey. After the 2023 elections they explored a joint local government arrangement but failed to secure enough seats. Shiʿa-Turkmen actors, by contrast, tilted toward Iran-aligned currents and in 2024 backed a provincial coalition that installed the PUK, the Babylon bloc (Christian, pro-Iran), and three Arab members allied with Halbusi (Taqaddum)—a line-up that excluded the Arab Alliance, KDP, and ITF. Halbusi himself is regionally close to the UAE, though he has maintained flexible ties with Iran. In March, Rakan al-Jubouri and ITF leader Hasan Turan traveled to Ankara and were received by Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, a reminder that counter-alignments remain active. These ties shape who fragments and who coheres at the edges—and in a Sainte-Laguë race, the edges are where mandates are won or lost.

Measured against the 2023 baseline, the strategic questions for the next two weeks are clear. Can the PUK translate incumbency into the extra eight to ten thousand votes needed to lift its ninth-divisor quotient and secure a fifth mandate? Can the Arab Alliance successfully transfer Rakan al-Jubouri’s networks to his son and offset the simultaneous loss of Khalid al-Mafraji, or does the third Arab quotient give way? Will the Taqaddum consolidation of Uruba and Qiyada harden the Arab ladder, or will tribal rivalries between al-Jubur and Obeidi reintroduce the fragmentation characteristic of recent cycles? And on the Turkmen side, can Rescue/Salvation rebuild its 2021 scale and climb from the low twenties into the low thirties, while the ITF defends its two quotients?

None of these shifts requires sweeping swings. The decisive movements will be a few thousand votes in neighborhoods that already revealed their preferences in December 2023. If Arab consolidation holds and the Alliance successfully ports Rakan’s vote to his son, the last-seat bar will rise and the map will likely solidify near the mechanical rerun: PUK on four, KDP on one, ITF on two, Arab Alliance on three, with Taqaddum’s strengthened ladder absorbing the space occupied in 2023 by Al-Uruba and Al-Qiyada, and the remaining single seats rounding out the total. If, instead, Arab lists cannibalize one another and PUK’s incumbency produces even a modest lift, the fifth PUK seat becomes more likely and the Arab late quotient is the one that falls below the line. The Christian quota seat will proceed on its separate track in either case.

Kirkuk’s election is often caricatured as volatile. This year it is anything but. The modified Sainte-Laguë formula—frequently blamed for “burning” votes—is unforgiving of dispersion and rewarding of discipline. Parties that keep their supporters focused on one logo, align tribal networks with national lists rather than against them, and respect the arithmetic of the final quotient are those most likely to discover that a system designed to punish fragmentation can, at the margin that matters, reward the smallest, smartest gains.