Iran to hold runoff presidential election between Pezeshkian and Jalili after low-turnout

TEHRAN: Iran will hold a run-off presidential election on July 5 after neither of the top candidates secured more than 50 percent of votes in Friday’s polls amid historic low turnout.

Mohsen Eslami, an election spokesman, announced the result in a news conference carried by Iranian state television. He said of 24.5 million votes cast, Pezeshkian got 10.4 million while Jalili received 9.4 million. Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf got 3.3 million. Shiite cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi had more than 206,000 votes. 

The vote to replace Ebrahim Raisi after his death in a helicopter crash came down to a tight race between the sole moderate in a field of four candidates and the supreme leader’s hardline protege.

“None of the candidates could garner the absolute majority of the votes, therefore, the first and second contenders who got the most votes will be referred” for the second round, scheduled for next Friday, Eslami told a press conference.

Out of around 61 million eligible voters, some 24,500,000 voters headed to the polls, he added, with a turnout of around 40 percent – the lowest yet in the history of the Islamic Republic.

Out of Iran’s 13 previous presidential elections since the Islamic revolution in 1979, only one has led to runoffs – in 2005.

The election authority counted a total of 1,056,159 spoiled ballots. The elections were originally scheduled for 2025 but were brought forward by the death of ultraconservative president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month.

The Guardian Council, which vets electoral candidates in the Islamic Republic, had originally approved six contenders.

But a day ahead of the election, two candidates – the ultraconservative mayor of Tehran Alireza Zakani, and Raisi’s vice president Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi – dropped out of the race. In the 2021 elections that brought Raisi to power, the Council disqualified many reformists and moderates, prompting many voters to shun the polls.

The turnout then was just under 49 percent, which at the time was the lowest in any presidential election in Iran.