Zeki Nayif, a Sunni dressed in traditional Arab garb, spoke bluntly as a group of men at a newspaper kiosk gathered around.

"The Democrats are better than Bush's people. We want security and peace to prevail," he said, then walked off.

Ala Abid Ali, a Shiite among the group, was of the same mind: "As far as I'm concerned I hope that the Democrats will work for providing security for the Iraqi people, who are suffering greatly."

Iraqi politicians opposed to the continued US presence in the country were delighted with the outcome.

"The vote shows the Iraqi and American people are of one mind about withdrawing US troops," said Falah Hassan Shanshal, who leads the parliamentary bloc of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

"We hope the Democrats don't forget their campaign promises. If they don't, we will deal with them in a brotherly way once the last American soldier pulls out from Iraq," he said.

Even moderate Kurdish lawmaker Mohamoud Othman saw the shift to Democrats as a result of the Bush administration's "bad policy of spending too many lives in Iraq and too many billions of Americans' tax money."

"Today he (Bush) was taught a lesson," said Othman, whose fellow Kurds are deeply indebted to the US for allowing the ethnic group to establish a virtually autonomous region in the north of Iraq.

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