(Bloomberg) -- Mongolia’s ruling party won a slight majority of seats in parliamentary elections Friday but lost ground to the opposition amid voter demands to battle corruption and reap more benefit from the country’s mineral wealth.

The Mongolian People’s Party took an estimated 68 of 126 seats, according to preliminary results and estimates from the news website Ikon.mn. The main opposition Democratic Party took an estimated 42 seats, with smaller parties accounting for the rest.

The results mark a step back for Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai, whose party had won 82% of seats in 2020 elections. While Oyun-Erdene will almost certainly be the nominee to lead the next government, the loss calls into question whether he will be able to retain the job.

The election was Mongolia’s first since amending the constitution in 2023 to expand the parliament by 50 members. Sweeping changes to rules and the makeup of its legislature promise the largest and most diverse collection of lawmakers yet. Overseas voting was also allowed again after it was excluded in recent parliamentary elections.

The Mongolian People’s Party has 62 seats now in the current, smaller body, while the Democratic Party has 10. The latest revisions offered select voters more than 100 candidates to choose from and established a minimum 30% of seats reserved for women, from the current 13 lawmakers in office.

Some of the key issues are corruption in Mongolia’s mining sector after two former government members received guilty verdicts for what state prosecutors say was their part in the pilfering of coal from state-owned stockpiles.

Mining represented 28% of Mongolia’s GDP last year and comprised 86% of all exports, mostly to China. The country has vast resources of coal and copper, a metal deemed crucial to the global energy transition. Its largely untapped deposits of rare earths have attracted mining interests from countries including France, Germany and the US.

Adding to the tensions for the vote was an unusual act of violence this month when a member of the Democratic Party was killed, with the suspect being an election campaigner from another party, local news outlet ikon.mn reported, citing police. 

While the MPP leader said the party would drop the candidacy of Defense Minister Saikhanbayar Gursed, for whose campaign the alleged attacker was working for, the candidate vowed to continue his campaign, ikon reported.

The East Asian nation has also struggled to deal with disinformation on social media, including deepfake videos. Civil society groups criticized the government’s efforts to crack down on fake news, which have included detaining journalists. The Justice Ministry declined to comment on the arrests.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has sent a team to observe the elections for the landlocked country sandwiched between China and Russia. 

Mongolia’s dependence on mining revenues from a handful of commodities almost entirely bought up by Chinese buyers keeps the country vulnerable to boom-bust commodity cycles, limited employment opportunities, and inequality. 

“Diversification remains a major, major, major issue of discussion,” said Khashchuluun Chuluundorj, a professor of economics who is on the board of Mongolian Mining Corporation and is executive director of the Mongolia Oil Shale Association.

(Updates voter turnout from first paragraph. An earlier version corrected the number of existing female lawmakers.)

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.