Perhaps it wasn’t surprising but Nawaz Sharif won. What was surprising was that he won by an absolute landslide. He’s going to have an absolute majority nationally and a 2/3rds majority in the Punjab. Sindh is likely to have a PPP government and KPK will have some sort of PTI led coalition.

Results are still coming in, but at the moment it is:

PML-N 130

PTI 33

PPP 31

MQM 15

Islamic parties 8 (JUI 5, JI 3)

PML-F 4

PPMAP (a Baluchi party) 3

NPP (A PPP splinter) 2

AML (a PML splinter) 1

ANP 1

PML-Q 1

AJIP (the new party of Musharraf – who were supposed to be boycotting) 1

Independents 21 (expect to see some of these join the PML)

Here’s a very rough and ready map. I am grateful to uelect.org.pk as I stole their 2008 map and updated it. Its based on provisional results so some of these will change, and I’ve already spotted at least one that’s wrong:

It is just incredible how well the PML did in Punjab. They destroyed the PML-Q and the PPP only won one seat. The PML didn’t really break out of the Punjab but they didn’t need to – and they did randomly win a seat in Karachi.

The PTI didn’t break through in the urban Punjab but they did get a lot of second places and could be well set next time round. They also cleaned up in Pathan areas.

Also interesting to see mainstream parties taking advantage of new rules to field candidates and win seats in the Tribal Areas.