Publish Date: 30 June 2024 - 04:22

Iran’s presidential election goes to runoff

Results in Iran’s 14th presidential election show that the votes have gone to a runoff between Massoud Pezeshkian and Saeed Jalili slated for July 5, according to the spokesperson for Iran’s election headquarters, Mohsen Eslami.

Voters cast their ballots on Friday to elect the successor to President Ebrahim Raisi, who lost his life in a helicopter crash on May 19.

The ballot boxes of 58,640 polling stations across the country and 344 others abroad have been counted, Eslami announced on Saturday.

Over 61 million Iranians were eligible to vote in the election.

The results of Iran’s 14th presidential election show a tight race between Pezeshkian and Jalili. After counting 24,535,185 votes, Pezeshkian won with 10,415,991 votes while Jalili had 9,473,298.

Another candidate, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, gained 3,383,340 votes while Mostafa Pourmohammadi gained 206,397.

Amirhossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi and Alireza Zakani had dropped their candidacy before the election.

Under Iranian electoral law, a runoff between the two top candidates is held on the first Friday after the result is announced if neither wins 50%+1 of the votes.

On May 19, 2024, a helicopter carrying late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, late Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, and several other officials crashed while flying from Khudafarin to Tabriz, northwestern Iran, and the Iranian president and the entire accompanying delegation were martyred.