While no single party received a majority of the vote, the National Forces Alliance — headed by former transitional prime minister and Gadhafi-era politician Mahmoud Jibril — appears to have garnered the most, especially within the northwestern region of Tripolitania. After the National Forces Alliance, the Muslim Brotherhood's Justice and Construction Party and the Salafist-leaning Al Watan party, headed by former rebel leader Abdelhakim Belhadj, came in second and third, respectively. The latter two Islamist parties performed modestly better in the nation's more conservative southern regions.

Without a clear majority, Jibril has called for the formation of a grand coalition comprising 150 parties from the 374 that participated in the elections as the newly elected government moves to draft the country's constitution. Although many outside observers have anticipated that a coalition government headed by one or more liberal democratic parties will take power, the true ideological disposition of the government is less than clear.

The National Forces Alliance has described itself as liberal or moderate, but Jibril has stressed his party's commitment to Islam and Sharia as the basis for Libya's legal and political future. This emphasis is meant to secure the support of Islamist parties, without which any coalition would be unable to govern. Additionally, two of the outgoing National Transitional Council's initiatives intended to limit Tripoli's dominance over the rest of the country may complicate matters for the new coalition. First, the council decreed that members of the body tasked with writing Libya's new constitution must be directly elected instead of appointed. Second, it ruled that registered parties may claim only 80 of the 200 seats in the new body, with the remaining seats required for the two-thirds majority taken by independent politicians. These are both aimed at ensuring the new constitution is written with input from areas besides Tripoli and from religious or rural interests that are not represented by the well-funded political parties that dominated the elections.

Jibril and Belhadj, leaders of two of the main parties, have strong connections to the Tripolitania region and foreign stakeholders, while Belhadj's party is rumored to still receive financial backing from Qatar. Jibril will not hold any official government position because of laws passed in January that prevent the unelected members of the National Transitional Council from holding office. Further, even though his party performed well, his influence is undermined by the fact that he is a member of the Warfalla tribe, which supported Gadhafi until February 2011. Jibril himself was a member of the Gadhafi government in the late 2000s, earning the criticism of many Libyans who have questioned his continued involvement in the post-revolutionary political process.

Representatives elected from areas seeking an semi-autonomous state, such as Benghazi, and those operating under a relative state of local autonomy such as Misurata and Zentan, or areas fearing a backlash for their late defection from Gadhafi such as Sirte and Bani Walid are likely to push back against a Tripoli-dominated coalition. And despite the purportedly pro-Islamist grand coalition, Islamist militias are likely to reject the authority of a coalition government that they see as insufficiently amenable to their interests.

International observers hailed the generally orderly electoral process as a watershed moment for the future of the Libyan state. In a country as divided as Libya, however, elections will not be the ultimate arbiter of political power. As long as regional militias remain armed — and they violently resist disarmament — the central government in Tripoli can continue to be ignored. Islamist brigades and Libya's jihadists are unlikely to accept the moderate Islamist government proposed by Jibril's coalition. Despite a relatively smooth election, Libya's divisive geography and internal demographic splits will all but guarantee that the grand coalition forming now will inherit the outgoing National Transitional Council's problems in creating a stable, unified Libya.