Iran Presidential Elections: Pezeshkian Leads

By Staff, Agencies

With over 14 million ballots counted in Iran’s presidential election until Saturday morning, Masoud Pezeshkian has slightly increased his lead on runner-up Saeed Jalili by winning 42.32 percent of the votes, the Elections Headquarters announced.

On Saturday morning, Mohsen Eslami, the spokesman for the Elections Headquarters, gave new details of the results of Friday’s presidential election, saying a total of 14,070,462 votes have been tallied by 8:20 am local time.

The latest figures show that Pezeshkian has won 5,955,781 votes, equivalent to 42.32% of the ballots.

“The runner-up, Saeed Jalili, has secured 39.51% of the votes with 5,560,321 ballots,” Eslami said, adding that “the two other candidates, namely Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Mostafa Pourmohammadi, have garnered 13.44% and 0.79% of the votes, respectively.”

Over 61 million Iranians were eligible to cast their ballots at around 59,000 polling stations across the country on Friday.

The polls took place a year ahead of schedule, as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi passed away in May.

A helicopter carrying President Raisi and his entourage crashed in northwestern mountainous forests on May 19, killing the president, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, and six others