Iran: Election Turnout Around 41%

According to Iranian media, the participation rate in Iran’s elections is “about 41%.” A result that, if confirmed (there is no official statement on this yet), will be lower than the already very negative result of 2020, when 42.5% of eligible voters went to the polls.

When polling stations opened, Iranian leader Ali Khamenei urged voters to show “civic conscience” and go “to vote as soon as possible.”

59,000 polling stations across the country opened at 8:00 in the morning Iranian time on Friday, March 1, 2024, with more than 15,000 candidates vying for 290 seats in the Iranian parliament and 144 candidates for the 88-member Assembly of Experts, which oversees the Islamic Revolutionary Leader.

Voting ended at midnight local time after the deadline was extended three times, each time by two hours, pushing the original limit back from the original 18:00 deadline. Anticipating the results, which seem clear and will be announced in the coming hours, President Raisi was quoted by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) as praising the high turnout in the elections before leaving for Algeria, where he traveled to attend the 7th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF).

Iranian media outlet PressTV also explains that “the official turnout in the Iranian parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections has yet to be announced, but preliminary results show that more than 40% of voters exercised their right to vote, rejecting calls by hostile Western regimes and their media to boycott the elections.”

Western media interpret the same result in a diametrically opposite sense, setting the result defined as “above 40%” at around 41%. Iranian media also talk about 25 million out of 60 million eligible voters. This result would be on par with, if not worse than, the 42.5% in the 2020 election. In 2016, the turnout was above 60%.