More than a month of lobbying and horsetrading lies ahead in the Marshall Islands, as results from this week's election flow in.
Hilda Heine. Photo: Office of the President of the Marshall Islands
Preliminary results show that the incumbent president, Hilda Heine, has been returned to her electorate, but several incumbents face an uphill battle.
The new Parliament will elect a president when it sits in January, and Dr Heine is yet to decide whether she wants to stand for a second term.
RNZ Pacific correspondent Giff Johnson said she would need to pull a coalition together.
"It's going to be a matter of pulling people together to come up with some kind of a coalition group because we don't have real political parties so it's more just finding out who can be brought into align with a group that has got a few people already and then bring it up to 17 to get a majority."