Provisional Voter Turnout Recorded at 49.8%
In the Iranian presidential election, moderate reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian (70) defeated hardline conservative candidate Saeed Jalili (59) by a 10% vote margin.
According to the Iranian Ministry of Interior and state media on the morning of the 6th (local time), the preliminary count of the runoff election held the previous day showed Pezeshkian winning with approximately 16.38 million votes (54%).
His opponent Jalili received about 13.53 million votes (44%).
In the first round of voting on the 28th of last month, Pezeshkian was the only reformist among the four presidential candidates and unexpectedly took first place. In the runoff, he defeated Jalili by about 2.85 million votes to become the final winner.
The voter turnout was preliminarily estimated at about 49.8%. Although this is nearly 10 percentage points higher than the turnout of the first round last month (39.9%), which was the lowest since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, it is still low compared to previous presidential elections.
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