Hard-liner Raisi wins Iran presidency amid record low turnout
Ebrahim Raisi's win came as little surprise amid widespread voter apathy, in a race already tilted to his favor by a powerful supervisory body.
With all the votes counted following Friday's presidential election in Iran, ultraconservative cleric and judiciary chief Ibrahim Raisi emerged as the winner by an absolute landslide in the contentious race marred by boycotts and apathy. With the final official results out, the turnout stood at 48%, the lowest ever in a presidential election in the 42-year history of the Islamic Republic.
Even as vote counting was still underway, Raisi's three rivals all conceded defeat, sending him congratulatory messages.
The incumbent moderate President Hassan Rouhani, who defeated Raisi in the 2017 election, sat down with his successor to express his own congratulations. "Everyone already knows the winner," Rouhani declared earlier at a cabinet meeting, without naming the cleric, notorious for his human rights violations as a long-time prosecutor.
According to the final results announced by Iran's Interior Ministry, Raisi received over 17.9 million of the 28.9 million votes. The total number of eligible voters was 59.3 million. Coming in second to Raisi were "blank and void" ballots, which set an odd record in Iran's history with over 3.7 million counted.
