ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Monday's elections gave Pakistan two remarkable verdicts of democracy: Pervez Musharraf is now a lame-duck president, and radical Islamists waging war against the government have found no mandate with the Pakistani people.

Mr. Musharraf's party suffered crushing losses all across Pakistan, winning just 15 percent of the vote.

In the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan – the two provinces where Taliban and other militants have based their war – voters rejected religious parties that stood by as the power of the radicals grew over the last six years.

President Bush, traveling in Ghana, called the voting results "a victory in the war on terror."

"There were elections held that have been judged as being fair, and the people have spoken," Mr. Bush said. "It's now time for the newly elected folks to show up and form their government. The question then is, 'Will they be friends of the United States?' I certainly hope so."

Mr. Musharraf won a five-year term as president last year, but Pakistan's Supreme Court threatened to invalidate that result as a rigged election. Before the court could act, Mr. Musharraf declared emergency rule in November and arrested many of Pakistan's judges and lawyers.

The leaders of the parties that won the most votes Monday have called for Mr. Musharraf to resign, but he has rejected those calls.

Some political leaders have talked of impeachment, but Mr. Musharraf's party remains in control of the Pakistani Senate, which did not face the voters Monday.

Mr. Musharraf's job now appears more threatened by a judiciary that Monday's winners have promised to restore. And after retiring from the army, Mr. Musharraf has no power base to rally to his cause, Pakistani analysts say.

Political power is now likely to shift back to Pakistan's next prime minister, which was the chief executive position in Pakistan before Mr. Musharraf seized power in a 1999 coup.

Who will be the next prime minister is still up in the air, however.

Asif Ali Zardari, the husband of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, said Wednesday night that he would not be a candidate for prime minister. Mrs. Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party won the most seats in Monday's National Assembly elections.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was ousted by Mr. Musharraf, led his party to winning the second-largest number of assembly seats. Mr. Sharif and Mr. Zardari are expected to try to form a coalition government.

Some analysts hailed the voters' rejection of Islamic militancy as an even more important result of the vote.

"The greatest achievement of this transition to democracy is the rout of the religious extremists who wanted to plunge Pakistan into anarchy," wrote Najim Sethi, editor of the Daily Times in Lahore. "Al-Qaeda and the Taliban movement of Pakistan have been thoroughly discredited for using violent means to achieve dubious ends."

Abdul Kadeer Khamoush, a leader of Pakistan's Muslim fundamentalist religious schools in Lahore, said voters in the most turbulent part of the North-West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan took the lead in rejecting Taliban militants.

"You saw the anger against them in the election results for the Swat region," Mr. Khamoush said. "The people selected the most liberal party, one founded by a nonviolent partner of [Mahatma] Gandhi" in fighting for India and Pakistan's independence from British colonialism.

A coalition of religious parties swept into power in provincial elections held in the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan in 2002, in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban government that harbored Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda leadership.

Under their rule, provincial police forces did not act against the Taliban in Pakistan. And they refused to ask the Pakistani army to intervene to put down the increasingly violent militants moving freely across the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In Monday's provincial elections in North-West Frontier Province, the religious party coalition fell from 50 to three seats, according to still-unofficial results. The liberal Awami National Party appeared likely to form the next government in the province.