Second Round of Elections Set for Early May

Iran announced that the second round of parliamentary elections for the Ninth Majlis will be held May 4th. In Tehran, only five candidates were elected in the first round earlier this month, with 25 other seats being contested in the second round. There will be second-round elections mostly in other major cities as well.

Iran - Discrepancies in Government’s Data on Elections Turnout

64 Percent or 54 Percent?

Yesterday, in a press conference in Tehran, Iran’s Interior Minister Brig. Gen. Mustafa Mohammad Najjar told reporters that 26,472,760 citizens cast their votes in the nationwide elections for the Ninth Majlis. The minister’s remarks were widely distributed and also appeared on the Interior Ministry’s website. Two weeks ago, Gen. Najjar had officially announced the number of eligible voters nationwide at 48,288,799. Considering that the Interior Ministry is in charge of the elections in Iran, these figures are as official as they can get.

Now let’s see what the percentage of those voted is to those eligible to vote, or otherwise the turnout: 26,472,760/48,288,799= 54%.

The trouble is that the minister himself has calculated and announced the turnout to be at 64%, a figure widely quoted by the media, including by this lowly blogger. The government has also used the figure to declare a moral victory of sort over the opposition. But didn’t they just add 10% to the actual turnout?

In the elections in Tehran, there was also an odd development: the eligible voters reported were 2.5 million people less than the number for the Eight Majlis in 2008. Considering the rapid growth of the population in Tehran, this statistic does not seem correct. As a result, the Interior Minister’s report that 48% of eligible voters in Tehran turned out in the polling stations seems also to be inflated.

Conservative Groups Leading in Iran Elections

The Iranian authorities report turnouts of 64 percent nationwide and 48 percent in Tehran in the elections for the Ninth Majlis.

In Tehran, with one-third of ballots counted, the ruling United Principlist Front (UPF) and the ultraconservative Resistance Front (RF) candidates are in the lead, with their top candidates capturing 28 and 27 percent of the votes respectively. Only a single candidate not belonging to the two groups, Ali Motahari of the Voice of Nation, is among the top vote getters expected to be elected from Tehran.

Qolam-Ali Hadad Adel, a former speaker of Majlis and Ayatollah Khamenei’s political confidant (whose daughter is married to Khamenei’s son), and who was supported by both UPF and RF, is leading in Tehran with 405,053 votes, or 46 percent of the votes counted. UPF’s top candidate, Hojatoleslam Mohammad Hassan Abutorabi, is at second place with 245,806 or 28 percent, and RF’s top candidate, Morteza Agha-Tehrani, is third with 238,081 or 27 percent.

Ali Motahari, the top candidate in the Voice of Nation list, is at the eighth place with 153,212 votes or 17 percent of the votes counted so far.

Elections for Ninth Majlis

The elections for the Ninth Majlis will be held on Friday 2 March across Iran. In the absence of the reformist and opposition candidates, the race is among various conservative and ultraconservative groups and personalities. 


The most contested seats are in Tehran, where the leading conservative factions are running against each other and the outcome of the elections would determine the influence of each faction and the balance of power within the Islamic Republic’s ruling circles. Following are the more prominent groups participating in the elections and their top candidates for Tehran.

- United Principlist Front, the majority in the current Majlis, led by Assembly of Expert chairman Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani:

• Hojatoleslam Mohammad Hassan Abutorabi
• Qolamali Haddad Adel
• Hojatoleslam Qolamreza Mesbahi Moqadam
• Ahmad Tavakoli

- Resistance Front, led by the ultraconservative Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi:

• Morteza Agha-Tehrani
• Hojatoleslam Rohollah Hosseinian
• Ali Asqar Zareie
• Hojatoleslam Nabavian

- Voice of Nation, led by Ahmadinejad’s chief critic Ali Motahari:

• Ali Mother
• Ali Abbaspour Tehrani
• Hamireza Katouzian
• Hassan Qafoori-Fard

- Faith and Justice, led by Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, accused by the mainstream conservatives as “deviationists”:

• Seyed Asqari Alaie
• Nosratollah Ekvanian
• Fatemeh Elia
• Elham Aminzadeh

- Democratic Front, supporters of Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani:

• Soheila Jelvehzadeh
• Hossein Hashemi
• Alireza Mahjoob
• Elaheh Rastgoo

48,288,799 people are eligible to vote, with 3.9 million becoming eligible to cast their votes for the first time.