Record Number Vote in Jordan’s Legislative Election : Mideast: Early returns indicate no group has a clear majority. Clan chiefs and traditional politicians apparently have an edge.

More than 800,000 Jordanian and Palestinian voters poured into 2,900 polling booths Monday, casting a record number of ballots for a wide assortment of traditional elders, Islamists, leftists and pro-government moderates in peaceful parliamentary voting that appeared to reinforce Jordan’s key role in Middle East democracy.

Official final results in Jordan’s first multi-party election in almost four decades will not be announced until later today, but partial returns this morning indicated that no single group or political party will emerge with a clear majority in the 80-seat Council of Deputies.

The largely free and fair election in a region where democracy is a rarity saw a field of 534 candidates and drew a record 68% of Jordan’s eligible voters to well-organized polling stations in schools throughout the land.

Early voting patterns broadcast on state-run Jordan Television appeared to confirm analysts’ predictions that the polls will favor Jordan’s Bedouin clan chiefs and traditional patronage politicians over the fundamentalist Islamic alliance that won the most seats in the lower house four years ago.

But political analysts here warned that it was too early to rule out a strong Islamist showing in a vote widely seen as a key test of Islamist popularity in the kingdom.

Candidates running on the slate of the fundamentalist Islamic Action Front, which won 22 seats in 1989 and remains the nation’s best-organized and most established political force, were leading in several party strongholds in Amman.

In the first two dozen unofficial final results announced on Jordan Television early today, the front had won at least five seats. At the same time, two former Islamist deputies lost seats they were expected to win, leading several political analysts to speculate that Islamists’ influence probably will be reduced in the new Parliament.

Most analysts expect the newly elected body to be less confrontational than its predecessor was with Jordan’s secular ruler, King Hussein, as the monarch continues to play a pivotal role in the Arab-Israeli peace process.

The analysts said voting patterns also indicated that the election was not, as some government officials had feared, a referendum on the recent peace accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Although the results are expected to have a significant impact on the Middle East peace process--the new Parliament will have to ratify any peace treaty between Jordan and Israel--many voters said Monday that they believe decisions of such magnitude are, in the words of one candidate, a matter of “higher politics,” a reference to Hussein.

The early results favoring tribal leaders and pro-government candidates reflected trends that were equally visible during Monday’s voting. Most voters said they selected individuals rather than parties, stressed family over ideology and considered only poverty and unemployment as key issues.

With the exception of the Islamic Action Front’s, party names or slogans were absent from most of the campaign posters plastered across Jordan’s autumn landscape, although the election marked the first time since 1956 that Hussein had permitted candidates to run under the banners of about 20 now-legal political parties.

“I voted for my relative,” one unabashed young woman said.

“I voted for the best man for this job,” another said. “He will bring us clean water, better roads, more services and, mostly, more jobs. And yes, he also happens to be my relative.”

Those views contrasted sharply with the Islamic idealism expressed by many voters in 1989, when Jordan’s unamended election law permitted voters to cast ballots for more than one candidate in their district. Responding to the well-organized Islamist Muslim Brotherhood’s promise of change four years ago, most voters cast their first votes for family and clan members, then gave their remaining votes to the Islamists.

“It’s largely an issue-less election,” concluded George Hawatmeh, editor of the Jordan Times. “What’s really important is keeping Jordan’s wheels of democracy well-oiled, and that’s what this election is all about.”