Iran’s presidential election heads to runoff

Saeed Jalili and Masoud Pezeshkian

By Pooneh Nedai 

TEHRAN: Iran’s presidential election has headed to a runoff next week after the election commission said that no candidate has achieved the required 50% mark.

On Friday, the 14th presidential election in Iran to choose the country’s ninth president after the Islamic revolution in 1979 was extended three times and it lasted until midnight.

The commission said that that as per the latest results, the turnout in the polls was 40%.

The turnout in the 2021 election was above 48%. In the parliamentary election earlier this year, it was 40.6%.

Masoud Pezeshkian and Saeed Jalili, the top two contenders, will compete in the second run next week.

The Ministry of Interior announced said that after over 24.5 million votes were counted, the results stood as follows:

Pezeshkian: 10.4 million votes; Jalili: 9.5 million votes, Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf: 3.4 million votes, and Mostafa Pourmohammadi: 206,397 votes.

Under Iran’s election law, a candidate must get more than 50 percent of all ballots cast to be declared winner.

If no candidate achieves the 50% mark, the top two candidates move to a runoff a week later. The run-off, scheduled for July 5, will pit Pezeshkian and Jalili.

In Iran’s history, only one runoff presidential election was held. It was in 2005 when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad outperformed Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and became president.

The second round will be particularly heated with Pezeshkian and Jalili seeking to win over the votes of the other candidates. The difference between them is rather narrow and the nation will watch closely how they will perform in the neck-to-neck race.

The reformists believe that Pezeshkian, their candidate, will win the election and become the next president.

Pooneh Nedai