The coalition's third main party, the catch-all Brazilian Democratic Movement, lacks a credible contender.
The other main party, Sam Rainsy's, is popular, in Phnom Penh especially, for its clean image.
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One reason is the natural wear and tear of being the main party in office.
It is the main party in the United Iraqi Alliance bloc that dominates the country's security forces.
Neither main party has held a majority in the Senate for most of the past 40 years.
The love-in of all three main party leaders with social-networking websites like Mumsnet in recent weeks was hilarious.
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Mr O'Farrell is the last of the main party candidates to be picked.
The BBC correspondent in Sofia, Nick Thorpe, says it will be hard for either main party to form a credible coalition.
Ravi Bopara last played for Kings XI Punjab on 7 April and is also scheduled to fly with the main party.
Attempts continue to lure the other main party in the Cardoso coalition, the venal and faction-ridden Brazilian Democratic Movement, into Lula's government.
Massimo D'Alema, the prime minister, who hails from the main party of reformed communists, has carried parliament and the country with him.
But as an indication of the Tories' direction of travel, more detailed than anything either main party has produced until now, it is enough.
The public, for its part, was well used to both main party leaders by now and showed little interest in getting to know them better.
And it commits the main party leaders - who all signed it - to taking action against any candidates or campaigners who provoke racial prejudice.
All the main party manifestos backed the idea that those who make our laws should be elected rather than appointed to, or inheriting, the job.
Meanwhile, the European elections and, more importantly, the local elections on the same day will be a major electoral test for both the main party leaders.
As for the Liberal Democrats (despite their silly claim to be the main party of opposition), they praise the government for adopting their own tax-and-spend agenda.
Dante Delgado, a popular former governor running for a centre-left coalition based on the Party of the Democratic Revolution, Mexico's third main party, polled a respectable 28.3%.
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Soon after he was elected party leader, Mr Trimble showed he was prepared to upset some of the unionist rank and file by meeting with the main party leaders in the Irish Republic.
The exact margin of victory could prove important, however, and could potentially leave Mr. Najib vulnerable to a leadership challenge from within the United Malays National Organization, the main party in the National Front.
It means that both the PPP and, especially, the other main party, the Pakistan Muslim League (N), led by Nawaz Sharif, have a bank of religious-minded voters whom they must be careful not to offend.
He jousted with Mr Moussa in the television debate and he is backed by some secular leftists as well as by the main party of Salafists, who won more than 20% of the seats in parliament.
Faced with a crumbling Labour government and Mr Cameron's seduction of the swing vote, the Lib Dems should have sought to become the main party of the left once Sir Menzies Campbell relinquished the leadership in 2007.
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And the aide had quoted me something about according to an agreement that all the candidates had made with the main party, the Democratic Party, that they weren't going to accept any debates that fell outside the prearranged ones or the prescheduled ones.
It was a sharp and telling contrast with Zimbabwe's other main party, the former opposition MDC - now "partners" in an uneasy unity government - which can rarely even secure police permission for its rallies, and whose ministers are sometimes abused or detained at police roadblocks.
So civil servants have been dusting off their manuals on what to do in case of a hung parliament, and the Lib Dems elaborately refuse to set out the terms on which they would co-operate with either main party in a formal coalition or an informal alliance.
Only the blessed accident of a hung parliament (in which neither main party will have a working majority) at the next or some future election can lead to reforms of parliamentary practice, to greater accountability and to the constitutional checks on minority parliamentary rule that Britain now lacks.
The most striking outcome of the congressional election in July was the relative failure of the Islamists, whose main party, Justice and Construction, allied to the Muslim Brotherhood, got only 17 out of the 80 seats elected by proportional representation on party lists, whereas a coalition of secularists, liberals and milder Islamists won 39.
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The Bharatiya Janata Party, the main opposition party, said it will support the bill in Parliament.
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