Iran's presidential election heads to runoff, Pezeshkian to face Jalili

Iran will hold a runoff presidential election to replace the late President Ebrahim Raisi, an official has said after an initial vote saw the top candidates not secure an outright win.

The runoff election on July 5 will now pit Masoud Pezeshkian against the former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.

Mohsen Eslami, an election spokesman, announced the result in a news conference carried by Iranian state television on Saturday. 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. Mostafa Pourmohammadi had over 206,000 votes.

Iran's snap election was held after the late President Ebrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash last month.

The initial results came after the 14th presidential elections in Iran concluded after an 18-hour voting process.

A spokesperson for Iran's election headquarters, Mohsen Eslami, said the process concluded at midnight local time.

Shaping Iran's political landscape

But the Interior Ministry, which supervises the election, extended the voting three times to allow more voters to cast ballots.

Four candidates — Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Jalili, Pezeshkian and Mostafa Pourmohammadi — are vying for the presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran following the death of president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month.

An estimated 64 million voters in Iran were eligible to vote in the election, the majority of whom are young. In the 2021 presidential election, 59.3 million were eligible to vote.

A total of 58,640 polling stations were set up across the country to facilitate the voting process, more than 6,000 of which were in Tehran.

Outside the country, the Foreign Ministry designated 344 overseas polling stations for Iranians to exercise their franchise, except in Canada, which did not allow it.

The 2021 election, when Raisi won by a landslide, witnessed a record-low voter turnout of 49 percent.

The outcome of this pivotal election is eagerly awaited as it could significantly shape Iran's political landscape moving forward.

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Source: TRT