Iran heads to presidential run-off amid record low turnout

The snap presidential election in Iran is heading into a run-off next week after reformist-backed Masoud Pezeshkian and hardliner Saeed Jalili emerged at the top but failed to secure a majority in a vote with a record low turnout.

Only 40 percent of more than 61 million eligible Iranians voted, the Ministry of Interior said on Saturday, a new low in presidential elections since the country’s 1979 revolution.

The final numbers from election headquarters at the ministry showed that the moderate Pezeshkian received more than 10.4 million votes from a total of more than 24.5 million ballots counted, trailed by former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili with 9.4 million votes.

Conservative parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, with 3.3 million votes, and conservative Islamic leader Mostafa Pourmohammadi, with 206,397 votes, are out of the race. Two other candidates, Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani and government official Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, dropped out.

The snap election on Friday came within the 50-day constitutionally mandated period to select a new president after Ebrahim Raisi and seven others, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, died in a helicopter crash on May 19.

Like all major elections in the past four years, the vote on Friday saw low turnout, but the final number was much lower than the 45 percent to 53 percent suggested by polls.

The lowest presidential turnout in the more than four-decade history of the Islamic republic was the one that got Raisi into office, with 48.8 percent. At just below 41 percent, the parliamentary election in March and May had the lowest turnout of any major polls since Iran’s 1979 revolution.