So, it turns out that Lebanon's ruling pro-Western coalition managed to hang on to power, defeating a rival coalition that includes Hezbollah.

The editors over at HuffPo appear to credit this development to Obama's Thursday speech, blaring these headlines:

The Obama Effect? Pro-Western Majority Declares Victory Over Hezbollah In Lebanon

Early Test Of President's Efforts To Forge Middle East Peace

I hate to burst the bubble, but there's simply no evidence yet that Obama had any impact on the outcome. As Paul Salem explained Friday for FP, there were plenty of indications - such as the fact that it only ran 11 candidates -- that Hezbollah didn't really want to win and give up its cozy seat in the opposition. And further, it was Hezbollah's coalition partner, the mostly Christian Free Patriotic Movement, that seems to have underperformed expectations. In any case, the AP story on HuffPo flatly declares, "Obama's speech did not resonate in the election campaign."

Nor should we breathe a sigh of relief just yet. Now comes the ugly business of negotiating ministries, and it's likely that Hezbollah (whose power is measured in more than just parliamentary seats) will again demand a veto in a cabinet of "national unity" -- to the extent that such a thing exists in fractured Lebanon. It could be months of agonizing negotiations before a new government is formed.

The good news, of course, is that the Hezbollah-FPM coalition didn't win, which could have led to ugly recriminations, or worse, if the ruling Sunni-Druze-Christian alliance didn't accept the results. But I don't think we can chalk these results up to any "Obama effect" just yet, if ever.

UPDATE: Elias Muhanna weighs in:

Far more decisive, in my opinion, seems to have been: (1) the high turnout of Sunnis in Zahle — many of whom came from abroad — coupled with a low turnout of Christians; (2) strong feelings of antipathy towards Hizbullah by the Christians of Beirut who voted decisively for March 14th’s list in the district of Achrafieh; (3) some rare rhetorical blunders by Nasrallah in the past couple of weeks, calling the events of May 7th “a glorious day” for the resistance.

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