This post was written at 6 PM EST.

New York Times:

    In a day remarkable for its calm, millions of Iraqis from across the country cast ballots today to elect a parliament to a four-year term, with Sunni Arabs turning out in what appeared to be very heavy numbers and guerrillas mounting relatively few armed attacks. Iraqi officials said initial indications were that as many as 11 million people cast ballots, which, if the estimate holds true, would put the overall turnout at more than 70 percent. The day was strikingly peaceful, even in areas normally beset by violence. The American command here reported only 35 armed attacks, about half the daily average, with only 14 against polling centers. On Jan. 30, when Iraqis elected a transitional government, insurgents attacked nearly 300 times.

    The day’s most dramatic events unfolded in the country’s Sunni Arab neighborhoods, where hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who had boycotted the election in January came out this time to vote. Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad, like Adamiya, and in Kirkuk and Western Mosul, ordinarily tense and bereft of security, were filled with Iraqis walking to polling centers and lining up to cast their ballots. For a day, at least, many Iraqi Sunnis seemed won over, if not to the American presence in their country, then to the idea that they could realize their interests by the ballot and not the gun.

    The big Sunni turnout was helped along by the declarations of several insurgent groups, like the Islamic Army, that they would refrain from attacking polling centers. Even a declaration by several hard-core militant groups like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia denouncing the election included no threats to attack on election day.
    The insurgents not only failed to stop the election, but it appears that they did not even really try. Even in Anbar Province, where concerns about violence kept about a quarter of the province’s 207 polling sites closed, American Marine officers said the voting far exceeded their expectations.

Would you believe that the New York Times said this:

    [T]he day’s events appeared to be a significant triumph for Iraqi democrats and for the Bush administration, which has long held that broadening the electoral process would begin to draw ordinary Sunni Arabs away from the insurgency and encourage them to support the success of democracy.

. . . and this optimistic observation:

    Indeed, the apparent confusion within the insurgency has prompted American diplomats to say they have succeeded in driving a wedge between the most violent groups, like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and the more nationalist-minded ones, which the Americans and the Iraqis believe can probably be accommodated.

. . . along with this:

    The election, carried off by the Iraqis with help from the Americans and the United Nations, was, in a country at war, a logistical wonder. They opened some 6,048 polling centers, which were attended by about 300,000 election observers.

Washington Post:

    There were no boycotts this time and insurgents were providing security at some polling places. In Ramadi, for example, guerrillas of the Iraqi Islamic Army movement took up positions in some neighborhoods, promising to protect voters from any attacks by foreign fighters.

    “Right now the city is experiencing a democratic celebration,” Mayor Dari Abdul Hadi Zubaie said in Fallujah, where voters streamed to the polls. “It’s an election wedding.” [However, according to the Post,] “Many of those who cast ballots in Fallujah . . . said they considered it an act of resistance against the continued presence of U.S. Marines in their city.

    Turnout in Ramadi was less than 2 percent in October’s constitutional referendum; on Thursday, it was 80 percent, said Ramadi election official Yaseen Nouri.

The Times:

    Turnout in parliamentary elections was estimated at up to 80 per cent – or more than 12 million of the 15.5 million eligible voters . . . the major problem in the former rebel stronghold of Fallujah was a shortage of ballot papers and of vehicles to ferry the infirm to voting centres. Elsewhere in the restive Anbar province, there were even reports of armed insurgents providing protection outside polling stations to help lift the turnout.

    Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor of The Times, said from Baghdad today that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terror chief who heads al-Qaeda in Iraq, has deliberately kept a low profile during the election campaign for fear of alienating his Iraqi supporters. “If the community he’s operating in is wanting to vote, then that does drive a wedge between his goal and theirs,” Beeston told Times Online. “This is something that the Americans have wanted to exploit for a very long time.” Beeston said that Times correspondents around Iraq were all reporting brisk voting. In central Baghdad, he said, there was a “very relaxed mood” and people were “optimistic that they were taking part in something that would really change their country”.