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Since the end of the Second World War, two political parties have dominated political activity in the Kurdish territory in Northern Iraq: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Recently, a new movement has begun to emerge that presents the first legitimate opposition to these ruling parties. The Change List, a splinter group formed by former PUK members, is mobilizing Kurdish voters on the platform of change. In the KRG's 2009 parliamentary elections, the Kurdistan Region's ruling parties took nearly 60% of the votes, leaving the Change List with a mere 25% of the open parliamentary seats. While still a loss for the new movement, this development illustrated an unprecedented shift away from the nearly seventy years of the patronistic rule that defined Kurdish politics. This paper hypothesizes that voter concerns regarding nepotism, patronism and lack of transparency with the ruling parties drove this ground-breaking development and that socioeconomic changes over the past two decades have allowed for this shift in voter preferences. The emergence of the Gorran-Change List indicates a challenge to the status-quo relationship between the parties and the voters. This study will use a historical-sociological single-case study of security and economic liberalization as possible causal mechanisms influencing the realignment of the party-voter relationship in the Kurdish Regional Government of Northern Iraq. Additionally, this paper will investigate the implications of this shift on the Kurdish nationalist and separatist movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]