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All 40 seats in the Council of Representatives | ||||||||||||||||
This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. | ||||||||||||||||
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 Bahrain portal |
General elections were held in Bahrain in November and December 2006 to elect the forty members of the Council of Representatives. The first round of voting was held on 25 November, with a second round on 2 December 2006.
Voter turnout was 72% in the first round, in which Shi'a and Sunni Islamists dominated, winning a clean sweep of the 29 seats that were decided in the first round, while liberal and ex-communist MPs lost all their seats. Four candidates of the left-wing National Democratic Action (also known as Wa'ad) made it through to second round run-off, which decided the remaining 11 seats.
The elections were preceded by a major political realignment that saw the four opposition parties that boycotted the 2002 elections agree to take part in the political process. These included the Shia Islamist party, Al Wefaq, the radical Shia Islamist Islamic Action Society, the left-wing National Democratic Action Society and the Nationalist Democratic Rally Society. To meet the challenge posed by Al Wefaq, the two main Sunni Islamist parties, the salafist Asalah and the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Al-Menber Islamic Society, agreed to form a coalition to maximise their votes.