Journalists monitor a screen showing the fractional results of national election in Baghdad, March 15, 2010. Early results from the March 7 parliamentary vote show Shi'a Arab Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law bloc ahead in seven of 18 provinces, while strong Sunni Arab support has propelled the secularist Iraqiya list into second.                 REUTERS/Saad Shalash

Ali al-Adeeb, a State of Law candidate and Nouri al-Maliki's spokesman, said on Wednesday that election officials had manipulated tallies in some of the country's 50,000 polling stations before ballots were sent to Baghdad.

"There has been clear manipulation inside the election commission in the interests of a certain or a specific list," he said.

A count of 80 per cent of the ballots, released on Tuesday, showed that Iraqiya, a cross-sectarian bloc led by Iyad Allawi, had a slim lead in the votes cast nationwide.

Adeeb, who is a candidate for the city of Karbala, said that Iraqiya's progress during the 10 days of vote counting had been "like a miracle."

But a day later, Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law party had taken a slim lead over the bloc led by his main challenger.

Partial results based on the ballots from the March 7 vote gave al-Maliki's group, the State of Law (SOL), about 40,000 more votes than Allawi's Iraqiya bloc.

Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught reporting from the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, said on Thursday that 84.2 per cent of the national domestic vote has been counted so far.

The latest count gave al-Maliki's SOL 2,260,483 votes against Iraqiya's 2,220,443.

The premier received a boost with new results coming from the southern Shi'a provinces of Basra, Karbala and Dhi Qar.

Allawi led the prime minister with 9,000 votes on Tuesday. However, in the crucial province-by-province tally, al-Maliki has been ahead throughout the race, winning in seven out of Iraq's 18 provinces to Allawi's lead in five.

Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught, reporting from Baghdad, cautioned that the current tally includes only the general vote, which is for Iraqis voting inside Iraq.

"We still have two other big significant voting blocs to be included in the tally," she said.

The special vote, which was conducted on March 4 for military personnel, hospital patients, handicapped and prisoners, and the expatriate vote are still to be counted.

The country's proportional representation system makes it unlikely that any single group will clinch the 163 seats needed to form a government on its own, and protracted coalition building is likely.

The counting process has been fraught with claims of fraud, mostly from the opposition.

Al-Maliki himself has signed a letter to Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission, stating that State of Law has "received reliable information that supervisors of the electronic counting center" are linked to rivals contesting the poll, including some supporting Allawi.

It said the political allegiance of the counting center's supervisors undermines "their neutrality in administering such a momentous and crucial process," The Associated Press news agency reported.

The letter calls for an investigation into the political ties of all officials and employees at the counting center and argues that final results should not be released until all complaints are investigated "however long it takes."

Haidar al-Mulla, an Iraqiya spokesman, criticized al-Maliki's accusations.

"When we said there were some violations, he labeled our calls as losers' allegations. Now we proved to be at the lead he is complaining," al-Mulla told Al Jazeera.

"Even if we win, we will still investigate the violations, and we will send them to the courts. We will not be like him, taking the law by our own hands. We will even fight to get him or any other rival every right he or she is entitled for. That is why people are voting for us."

Michael Hanna, an analyst on Iraqi affairs at the Century Foundation in New York said: "Because it is so tight, it is more tense and you are going to see more allegations of fraud. People could try to use that as a political weapon."

Electoral commission official Saad al-Rawi confirmed the commission had received al-Maliki's complaint but said it was one of many to come in without concrete evidence.

He acknowledged that six workers at the counting center had been fired, but said it was for incompetence and entering incorrect data into the computers.

Independent Iraqi observers and U.N. officials advising the commission say they have seen no evidence of widespread fraud that could undermine the outcome.

Once the electoral commission announces the final poll results, the country's supreme court will have to certify them — after hearing appeals — within about a month of the election.

-Al Jazeera and agencies