Iran’s Presidential Elections: Race Goes to Runoff between Pezeshkian and Jalili

By Staff, Agencies

The spokesperson for the election headquarters in Iran, Mohsen Eslami, announced that the country will hold a runoff presidential election after an initial vote saw the top candidates not securing an outright win.

Eslami announced the result on Saturday in a news conference carried by national television after the count of nearly 25 million votes.

He said of 24.5 million votes cast, former health minister and senior lawmaker Masoud Pezeshkian got 10.4 million while former lead nuclear negotiator and chief of the top security body Saeed Jalili received 9.4 million.

The other two hopefuls – parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and former interior affairs minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi – trailed behind at 3.3 million and over 206,000 respectively.

Pezeshkian and Jalili will head into a runoff set for July 5. The second round is required if no candidate wins 50 percent of the vote, plus one.

Eslami has so far given nine updates on the results, the first of which came at around 3:25 am local time.

The latest update at around 11:37 a.m. local time showed Pezeshkian holding his lead with 10,415,191 votes [42.45%] out of 24,735,185 votes counted so far. Jalili edged closer with 9,473,298 votes [38.61%].

Qalibaf and Pourmohammadi both came a distant third and fourth with 3,383,340 [13.78%] and 2,063,397 votes [0.84%] respectively.