BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 30 - Defying death threats, mortars and suicide bombers, Iraqis turned out in great numbers on Sunday to vote in this country's first free elections in 50 years, offering a powerful, if uneven, endorsement of democratic rule 22 months after Saddam Hussein was overthrown.
Voters in Shiite and Kurdish areas turned out in especially large numbers, and at the day's end election officials here estimated that the nationwide turnout could exceed 60 percent. The turnout in the Sunni-dominated areas like Falluja and Mosul, where the guerrilla insurgency rages and where many Sunni leaders had called for a boycott, appeared to be substantially lower.
Still, election officials said voting in the Sunni-dominated provinces had appeared to exceed initial expectations, and in some cases might reach 40 percent. In Mosul, a Sunni-majority city and the scene of heavy fighting in recent weeks, Western reporters saw voters in Sunni neighborhoods lined up outside polling stations.
It was unclear how the results would affect Sunni resentment, one of the most daunting challenges to Iraq's future.
In the Shiite-dominated cities of southern Iraq, and through much of Baghdad, Iraqis streamed to polling places, eager to give the country's largest group real political power for the first time. They did so despite relentless insurgent attacks that left 35 people dead, plus nine suicide bombers.
In some polling centers, the mood turned joyous, with Iraqis celebrating their newfound democratic freedoms in street parties that, until the elections, were virtually unknown in this war-ravaged land.
As the sun went down, some Iraqis ran to the polling centers. Some election workers kept polls open late for them.
Election officials here said that a more accurate picture of the turnout would be known later in the week, as the votes were counted, and that the election results themselves were probably several days away.
Voters chose from among 111 parties for members of provincial parliaments as well as a 275-member national assembly, which will be empowered to write the country's constitution. That is scheduled to be followed by a referendum on the constitution, followed by another round of elections in December.
One group of candidates that appeared to do well was the United Iraqi Alliance, a large coalition of Shiite parties brought together by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's powerful religious leader. One senior aide in that alliance said the party had been told by American and British officials that it appeared to have captured more than 50 percent of the vote.
The slate of candidates led by Ayad Allawi, the prime minister, also appeared to have done well.
At least for now, the large turnout appeared to vindicate the strategy to hold elections sooner rather than later, over the objections of many Sunni leaders and in the face of the ferocious insurgency. That strategy, advocated by Ayatollah Sistani and President Bush, drew criticism that it would further divide the country and that, in any case, the Iraqis were not ready.
In polling places throughout the country, ordinary Iraqis not only braved significant violence to go to the polls, but also demonstrated that they understood the stakes, and that they knew what to do.
"We feel now that we are human beings living in this country," Muhammad Abdul-Ridha, 25, a Najaf goldsmith, said after dropping his ballot into the box. "Now I feel I have a responsibility, I have a vote. Things will go right if people leave us alone to do what we want to do. If they leave the Iraqi people to decide for themselves, things will get better."
The mood among many Iraqi leaders, and those who set up the electoral infrastructure, was jubilant. Some said the success of the vote, in a nation so traumatized by tyranny and war, had put to rest any notion that the Iraqi people, or indeed the Arab world as a whole, were incapable of grasping their political destiny.
"We have established the principles upon which a democracy can be built," said Fareed Ayar, the spokesman for Iraq's electoral commission.
In many parts of the country, the turnout seemed to rebuke the violent campaign to sabotage the balloting and the threats by insurgents to kill Iraqis who voted.
With vehicular traffic banned and American and Iraqi forces imposing especially tight security, the attacks on Sunday were carried out in some cases by men wearing explosive vests who rushed polling centers and blew themselves up.
In the Shiite and Kurdish areas, the strategy clearly failed. In Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, including Sadr City, many Iraqis cast their ballots to the sounds of exploding shells.
In some cases, the violence seemed to goad the Iraqis on. In the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Khadamiya in northern Baghdad, where nearly 100 people were killed in a terror attacks last year, the turnout was said to approach 80 percent.
In the Sunni areas, the picture was mixed. With most Sunni leaders calling for a boycott and the insurgents vowing to kill voters, officials said they were expecting a low turnout in the three Iraqi provinces where the Sunnis are a majority.
For Iraqi and American officials, the prospect of a broad Sunni boycott has proved to be the most troubling aspect of the elections. The fear has been that a big turnout by Shiites and Kurds, coupled with a near-total Sunni boycott, could accelerate the feeling of alienation felt by Sunnis and set the stage here for civil war.
On the other hand, a substantial turnout in the Sunni areas would be regarded as a huge blow to the insurgents, who claim popular support but often rely on threats and violence to cow Sunnis.
The dire predictions appeared to be borne out in some areas of the Sunni Triangle, the area north and west of Baghdad where the insurgency burns with the greatest intensity. In the town of Baji in northern Iraq, election officials did not show up. In Ramadi, where Iraqi officials set up a pair of polling places just outside the city, a total of just 300 ballots were cast, many of them by police officers and soldiers.
But Iraqi and American officials, convinced that people in the Sunni areas would vote if they could, said there were signs that more voters than expected had turned out.
In the weeks leading up to the vote, election officials took several extraordinary measures to make voting easier in Sunni areas. They allowed voters in some of those areas to register on election day, and permitted voters to travel outside their neighborhoods to cast ballots. In some of the smaller villages around Ramadi, where many city residents were encouraged to vote, election workers reported that they had run out of ballots. In the refugee camps outside Falluja, set up after heavy fighting there in November, Iraqi officials reported steady voting.
"In Anbar, the number of votes were very good compared to our estimates," Mr. Ayar, the election commission spokesman, said of that province, without telling what those estimates were. "We did not expect a lot of turnout, but we found a lot of people standing in line in Anbar."
Adnan Pachachi, the former Iraqi foreign minister and one of the country's most prominent Sunni candidates, said his own reports suggested that participation by Sunnis might have reached as high as 40 percent. If that holds, he said, it would amount to a repudiation of the violent way.
"The insurgency has been exposed - they have no popular support of any kind," Mr. Pachachi said. "I think this election will weaken the insurgency."
But in Mosul, a Sunni-majority city and the country's third largest, the reports were mixed and contradictory. Some officials reported lines of voters stretching outside polling places in the city's Arab districts, with others saying the insurgents were managing to keep voters away.
In November, more than 4,000 police officers in Mosul fled their posts when they were attacked by insurgents, and earlier this month, the city's entire election commission resigned.
Yet for all of that, there were some signs that Sunnis in Mosul were turning out to vote. Western reporters returning from American military patrols in the city's Arab neighborhoods reported seeing lines of voters streaming into polling places.
Mr. Ayar said initial reports suggested that the turnout in Mosul appeared to mirror that in Anbar Province - that it was much was higher than expected.
Still, there were troubling signs that in some pockets of Mosul's Arab districts, the insurgents were successfully keeping voters away.
"Young gunmen are shooting from the streets and on the rooftops just to scare people away," said Khasro Goran, Mosul's deputy governor. "There is an imam who called from the mosque for people not to vote."
Even if the most optimistic projections for Sunni turnout are met, the biggest challenge likely to face the new government will be persuading the Sunnis to join the political mainstream.
On Sunday, some of Iraq's most prominent Shiite leaders said they were prepared to boost Sunni representation in the new government. They said they would also recruit a number of Sunni leaders to help draft the country's constitution.
In the days leading up the election, some Sunni leaders, including those believed to be close to the insurgents, have indicated a willingness to join in the effort.
"The Shiites will form of a majority, but there has to be a prominent presence of Sunnis in the government," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser and a confidant of Ayatollah Sistani. "Now is the time for the Shiites to exercise statesmanship."
In many ways, the day belonged to Iraq's Shiites, the long-suppressed majority that suffered especially harsh treatment under Mr. Hussein. In Shiite cities across southern Iraq, the voters streamed forth, thrilling themselves and confounding their own predictions.
In Basra, the country's second-largest, predominantly Shiite city, one explosion after another echoed down the streets. Even so, as the day wore on, the number of voters swelled, and local officials began to appear to congratulate the Iraqis and themselves.
Abdul Sahib Al-Battat, the local elections chief, swept into the polling center at the Black Gold primary school, with a full entourage in tow. One by one, he inspected the voting stations with a military crispness.
Asked how the day had gone, Mr. Battat said in Arabic: "Bekhair. Gebeer. Bekhair. Shamel." Roughly translated: "Excellent. Big. Excellent. All of it."
Some Iraqis found in Sunday's election a victory that may ultimately loom larger than that of April 9, 2003, when Mr. Hussein's rule collapsed. The victory then was largely of American making, and one that, despite their relief that the tyrant was gone, many Iraqis felt they could never build on.
"The election was a victory of our own making," said Mr. Rubaie, the security adviser. "Today, the Iraqi people voted with their own blood."
Reporting for this article was contributed by John F. Burns from Baghdad, James Glanz from Basra, Edward Wong from Najaf, and Christine Hauser from Mosul.
No, I merely have great audacity coupled with a very strong desire to participate here in a positive discussion, wherein we can explore what conditions need be established by Iraqis in Iraq to achieve in Iraq a secure democracy.
