Hezbollah camp gaining ground ahead of Lebanon vote

Hezbollah and its Christian allies are expected to gain a slim advantage in Sunday's Lebanese parliamentary election, erasing the Western-backed anti-Syrian coalition's majority, pollsters said on Wednesday.

With most of the 128 seats decided by sectarian voting patterns and electoral pacts, the race will focus on some 30 seats. The Christian vote is seen as the main deciding factor.

"In the end, I imagine that the opposition will win the majority by a very slim margin -- two or three seats extra," Abdo Saad, director of the Beirut Center for Research and Information, said.

Rampant vote-buying and the unprecedented number of expatriates flying in or being flown in to cast their ballots may also affect which way the tightly contested seats will go.

A victory by Hezbollah and its allies will not necessarily align Lebanon squarely with the militant Shi'ite group's backers Iran and Syria. Nor will the West necessarily cut off its support for the fragile country.

Analysts say a national unity government is the most likely outcome, partly due to a rapprochement between Syria and Saudi Arabia, who back opposing factions in Lebanon, and the United States' recent policy of engaging with Syria and Iran.

Bellwether District

Rabih Haber, the head of Statistics Lebanon, did not rule out a comeback by the ruling coalition but he also said he expected a narrow opposition win.

"My overall expectation is the opposition will win by a very slim margin, by two or three seats maximum," he said.

The anti-Syrian coalition, led by Sunni Muslim Saad al-Hariri, gained a majority in parliament in a 2005 election riding on a wave of support after the assassination of his father, former premier Rafik al-Hariri.

The alliance, named March 14, includes Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, and Christian leaders Samir Geagea and Amin Gemayel.

Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun, who currently holds the largest Christian bloc in parliament, has sided with Shi'ite Muslim factions Hezbollah and Amal.

That makes the 7-seat electoral district of Zahle, with a combination of Sunni, Shi'ite and Christian voters, particularly difficult to call and widely seen as the bellwether for the election.

"Whoever wins Zahle will win the majority... Zahle is the decider," Saad said.

In the last election Aoun won Zahle by a wide margin. However shifting political alliances has meant that at least three seats could swing in favor of the Hariri alliance.

Haber said he expected March 14 to win four seats in Zahle, with an electoral "battle".

Other areas where competition is heavy include the northern Christian districts of Batroun, Koura, and Metn.

Haber and Saad both said there is no data on the thousands of expatriates who are expected to vote, which will make some seats too close to call. Expatriates, who number in the hundreds of thousands, cannot vote outside Lebanon.

Saad said the only way to alleviate the effects of vote-buying would be to have proportional representation with the whole of Lebanon as one electoral district.

Some 150 international observers are monitoring the poll.