Baghdad ? The man who has led Iraq for the past four years is battling for his political survival just as U.S. troops are getting ready to pack up and go home.

With about 83 percent of the votes counted from parliamentary elections, it’s not at all clear that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will emerge the winner because a secular challenger is showing surprising strength. And a drawn-out battle of negotiations with rival coalitions is inevitable.

“Al-Maliki is fighting for his political life,” said Joost Hiltermann, an analyst at the International Crisis Group. “He may well come out of this no longer prime minister. He may lose the elections, that is how close it is.”

The prime minister, known as a hardline Shiite during his first couple of years in power, has more recently transformed himself into a law-and-order nationalist who has occasionally reached out to minority Sunnis. While trying to re-establish a strong central government — most notably by routing a Shiite militia that ruled parts of Baghdad and Iraq’s second-largest city, Basra — al-Maliki has also alienated many key constituencies by governing with a heavy hand.