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Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki held a slender lead on Tuesday over his main rival in his bid to retain the top job, results from Iraq's parliamentary election showed.
While Maliki's State of Law Alliance was leading in the capital and six other southern provinces, his main rival, secular ex-premier Iyad Allawi, appeared to have gained more balanced nationwide support.
Results from the March 7 polls continue to trickle out on a daily basis, with election officials -- who have pleaded for patience -- releasing updated figures based on around 80 percent of ballots counted by late on Tuesday.
The election -- the second since Saddam Hussein was ousted in the US-led invasion of 2003 -- comes less than six months before the United States is set to withdraw all of its combat troops from Iraq.
State of Law leads in Baghdad, Iraq's largest province and accounting for more than twice as many parliamentary seats as any other, as well as in the oil-rich southern province of Basra, the third biggest in the country.
It is also ahead in five other mostly Shiite southern provinces, but failed to finish in the top three in all but one of Iraq's Sunni-majority provinces.
Allawi's Iraqiya coalition, on the other hand, was leading in four provinces, including Iraq's second biggest province Nineveh, but was neck-and-neck for the lead in a fifth, Kirkuk.
Allawi also placed in the top three in six predominantly Shiite provinces where Maliki was either first or second.
The Iraqi National Alliance, a coalition led by Shiite religious groups, is ahead in three southern provinces while Kurdistania, an alliance of the two main Kurdish former rebel factions, was ahead in all three of Kurdistan's provinces.
Both State of Law and Iraqiya have said they have entered talks with rival blocs to form a government, with analysts warning that political groupings could still manoeuvre to form a coalition without either list.
The country's proportional representation system makes it unlikely that any single group will clinch the 163 seats needed to form a government on its own, and protracted coalition building is likely.
Complete election results are expected around March 18, and final results -- after all complaints have been investigated and ruled upon -- are likely by the end of the month.
"We need several more days to announce the final results," Qassim al-Abboudi told a news conference on Tuesday, explaining that the appeals process would take about two weeks after full results were published.
Opposition groups have alleged fraud in the election and the count, but Maliki dismissed the claims in televised remarks to Iraq's National Security Council broadcast late on Sunday, his first public appearance since his office announced on Thursday that he had undergone surgery for an unspecified ailment.
Election officials have also downplayed allegations of fraud.
Faraj al-Haidari, head of the national election commission, told reporters the number of complaints in the general election was less than half those filed during provincial polls in January 2009.
Vote tallies have so far been released to chaotic scenes at the commission's data entry centre in Baghdad's Green Zone, with several provinces often published at once on a single television screen, usually leaving some out of view and sparking anger among assembled journalists and observers.
Security officials have expressed concern that a lengthy period of coalition building could give insurgent groups and Al-Qaeda an opportunity to further destabilise Iraq.
Their worries were illustrated when a double-blast suicide bomber targeting a military checkpoint and labourers killed eight people and wounded 28 other civilians on Monday, in Fallujah in Anbar province.
