Iran’s election underway with discontent seen affecting turnout
Iran’s snap presidential election got underway on Friday with the country’s stagnant economy and opposition to the ruling theocratic system weighing heavily on voters.
Polling stations across the Islamic Republic opened at 8 a.m. local time. Photos and footage released by state media mostly showed queues dominated by women wearing the chador – a long black religious covering – and scant signs of young people.
Participation at the last two major elections in Iran hit record lows, reflecting the unprecedented levels of unpopularity and dissent against the ruling clerical establishment, led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Mahmoud Sadeghi, a well-known reformist politician and former lawmaker, wrote in a post on X that he observed “turnout far lower than what was expected” when he went out to vote in a neighborhood of central Tehran at 11 a.m. local time.
Voters are choosing from four candidates: reformist Masoud Pezeshkian, hard liners Saeed Jalili and Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and conservative cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi. The snap election was called after Ebrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash last month.
Iran’s economy has been subject to tough U.S. sanctions since then-President Donald Trump abandoned the landmark nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic in 2018. The currency, the rial, has since lost more than 70% of its value against the dollar in the open, unregulated market.
The ruling clergy and the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have faced increasing levels of public dissent, including deadly protests in 2022 after a young woman died in police custody. She had been arrested for allegedly flouting religious dress codes.
Several videos posted on social media purported to show people protesting outside Iranian embassies where ballot boxes have been set up for nationals living abroad, including London, Berlin and Melbourne. The videos cannot be verified by Bloomberg.
The state broadcaster’s research unit and the state-run Iranian Students’ Polling Agency estimated that turnout would be between 48% and 53%, according to figures published on Tuesday. That’s comparable to the record low turnout of 48.5% when Raisi was elected in 2021 and far smaller than the more than 70% reported in 2017, when moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani was re-elected on a landslide.
The polling agencies haven’t yet released estimates for turnout on voting day, but earlier on Friday Khamenei repeated a call he made to the public earlier this week, urging them “to take voting seriously and take part in this important political test,” the semi-official Tasnim news agency quoted him telling reporters after he cast his own ballot.
That’s a message that will be heeded by his loyal followers and supporters who tend to be very religious and hold hard line political views, yet perhaps less so by younger people in urban centers.