BREAKING NEWS: Results from Iraq's Provincial Elections

 The original story comes to us from ABC News Via the Associated Press.

The Iraqi election authorities announced Tuesday that the country's first provincial elections in a decade saw relatively low turnout and largely benefited traditional parties.

There were 41% of registered voters who cast their ballots in Monday's general election and in Saturday's special polls for military personnel and internally displaced people living in camps, according to the Independent High Electoral Commission. Only 16 million eligible voters have registered to vote out of 23 million.

Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric and political leader who called for his followers to boycott the election, drew a particularly low turnout in his strongholds. After a lengthy standoff over the formation of a government, Al-Sadr officially stepped down from politics in 2022.

In 2019, en masse, young people protested the political establishment and largely avoided the polls.

It has a population of Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmen and has long been disputed territory between Baghdad's central government and the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north of Iraq. Kirkuk has the highest participation rate, 66%, with Kurdish candidates winning the majority.

In Baghdad, the coalition led by former Parliament Speaker Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi — a Sunni who was recently ousted by a Federal Supreme Court decision — won the most votes, followed by a coalition of Iran-backed Shiite parties that is the main rival of al-Sadr's bloc.

In Najaf, a stun grenade was hurled at a polling station without causing any injuries despite fears of violence.

A helicopter transporting electoral materials crashed near Kirkuk on Monday due to bad weather conditions, killing the pilot and injuring the second officer.