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Reformist Masoud Pezeshkian, ultraconservative Saeed Jalili qualify for Iran runoff election
[NEWARAB] Iran's sole reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian and ultraconservative Saeed Jalili have qualified for a runoff presidential election after leading in the first round, an official said on Saturday.Pezeshkian got more than 10,400,000 votes and Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator, has more than 9,400,000, said Mohsen Eslami, spokesman of Iran's election authority. "None of the candidates could garner the absolute majority of the votes, therefore, the first and second contenders who got the most votes will be referred" for the second round, scheduled for next Friday, Eslami told a press conference. Out of around 61 million eligible voters, some 24,500,000 voters headed to the polls, he added, with a turnout of around 40 percent - the lowest yet in the history of the Islamic republic. Out of Iran's 13 previous presidential elections since the Islamic revolution in 1979, only one has led to runoffs in 2005. Conservative parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf received about 3,383,340 votes and Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a conservative cleric, had 206,397 votes. Posted by: Fred 2024-07-01 |
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