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Abdullah Abdullah at his home in Kabul this week. He won 45 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results. Credit Massoud Hossaini/Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan — Abdullah Abdullah, a longtime opponent of President Hamid Karzai’s and an ardent supporter of the United States, emerged on Saturday as the clear front-runner in Afghanistan’s presidential election and could become the first non-Pashtun to lead the country in more than three centuries.
In preliminary results released on Saturday, Mr. Abdullah won 45 percent of the vote, but not enough to avoid a runoff with the leading Pashtun candidate, Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank economist and Karzai adviser, who won 32 percent. Afghan government officials, however, said Mr. Abdullah was on the verge of forging alliances with at least two of the Pashtun runners-up to gain their support and possibly the presidency in the next round.
Either of the top two candidates would represent a significant break with the years of deteriorating relations with the United States under Mr. Karzai, and would be a shift toward greater cooperation. Each candidate has said he would sign a security agreement with the United States that allows American forces to remain in the country past 2014 — an accord Mr. Karzai negotiated but then refused to sign.
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Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank economist and Karzai adviser, won 32 percent of the vote. Credit Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
The apparent advantage for Mr. Abdullah, with his long record of advocating closer relations with the United States and a more militant stance against the Taliban, was likely to be encouraging news for the United States and its NATO allies, although they have been careful to refrain from expressing support for any candidate in the race.
The election, the third for president since the NATO-led invasion of 2001, also appears to have been the country’s most democratic yet. The turnout was nearly double that of the last election, the deeply tainted race that Mr. Abdullah lost to Mr. Karzai in 2009, and early indications suggested that it was far cleaner than the last one, although final rulings on fraud complaints may not come for several weeks.
Such numbers, along with the expected Pashtun support, could give Mr. Abdullah a powerful mandate. In a recent interview, Mr. Abdullah said he would set a different tone in relations with the United States, ending the often-acrimonious criticism from Mr. Karzai over prisoner releases, civilian casualties and night raids.
“This rhetoric has not helped Afghanistan,†he said.
The two Pashtun candidates expected to throw their support to Mr. Abdullah are Zalmay Rassoul, believed to have been Mr. Karzai’s favorite, and Gul Agha Sherzai, a former warlord favored by the C.I.A. and popular in the Taliban’s southern heartland, Kandahar, according to two senior Afghan government officials.
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