Vote counting underway in Iran’s presidential election

The vote counting is underway in Iran’s presidential election.

Pro-reform candidate Masoud Pezeshkian has been leading with 5,955,781 votes. Hard-liner Saeed Jalili has been following him with 5,560,321 votes, as per the latest official figures released by the Interior Ministry.

Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf has received 1,891,385 votes, and Mostafa Pourmohammadi 111,967 votes in the 14,070,462 ballots counted so far.

According to Iranian state television, the early results did not initially suggest that Jalili would clinch outright victory in Friday’s election as it set the stage for a runoff election to replace late hard-liner President Ebrahim Raisi.

The state television also did not report any turnout figures for the race yet, which is crucial to understand if Iran’s electorate supports its Shiite theocracy after witnessing years of mass protests and economic turmoil.

According to the Associated Press, 10 million votes have been counted till now, in which Jaili received 4.26 million votes and Pezeshkian had 4.24 million. 

Another candidate fraying in the elections hard-liner speaker of the parliament Mohmmad Bagher Qalibaf received some 1.38 million votes. Shiite cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi got more than 80,000 votes.