Iran’s rulers said high turnout and smooth, predictable elections were crucial to maintaining the stability and legitimacy of their regime. Authorities announced late on Friday that they would extend the voting period three times, eventually closing polls at midnight local time after which electoral authorities would begin counting the votes.
State television aired footage Friday of long lines of people waiting to vote, but throughout the day Iranians posted images online of empty polling stations. The decision to stay home was an act of protest for some, but simply apathy for others.
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Khamenei was shown casting his vote in Tehran as polling stations opened in the morning. “Some voters are still undecided,” he said, apparently referring to reports of low voter interest. “There is no valid reason for them to be undecided,” he added. “The survival of the Islamic Republic depends on the turnout and participation of its people.”
The leading candidates in the vote are Parliament Speaker Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf and ultra-conservative former chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili. Heart surgeon Massoud Pezeshkian is the only candidate from the reformist bloc, which emphasizes gradual change and engagement with the West. Iran’s powerful Guardian Council, an unelected body of jurists and theologians, vetted and approved six candidates for the election, though two of them withdrew on the eve of the election to consolidate the conservative vote.
In Iran, the president deferes to the supreme leader on key issues such as national security and defence, but also sets the country’s economic policy, oversees the national budget and has the power to sign treaties and laws.
Earlier this week, Khamenei called for “maximum” voter turnout, saying the elections would “help the Islamic Republic triumph over its enemies,” and warned Iranians not to support candidates who “think that all roads to progress go through America,” an allusion to Pezechkian.
Since its establishment, Iran’s Islamic government has largely adhered to a theocratic system that gives political and religious power to Shiite clerics, but has also placed great importance on elections to underpin its authority.
“This is a contradiction that has been at the heart of the regime since its founding,” said Nathan Rafati, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group, adding that the contradiction “has become increasingly pronounced in the last few years.”
Iran once boasted high voter turnout, reaching 70 percent when President Hassan Rouhani was re-elected in 2017, according to state media. But turnout has plummeted since then, with only about 40 percent of eligible voters voting in this year’s parliamentary elections, the lowest on record.
At the time, Iran was facing political, social and economic turmoil, including the collapse of its nuclear deal with world powers and the reinstatement of U.S. trade sanctions that had crippled its economy. Iran’s supreme leader, General Qassem Soleimani, was killed in a U.S. airstrike near Baghdad airport, raising fears of a larger war. Inside the country, three major protests over rising prices, austerity measures and the country’s strict moral code were met with a deadly crackdown by Iranian security forces.
“I think the people who are going to vote are either people who are connected to the system and are happy with the status quo, or they are very naive,” the 38-year-old Tehran bakery owner said ahead of the vote.
She spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from authorities, saying she last voted in 2009. That year, authorities announced that hardline candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won the presidential election in a landslide victory, sparking massive street protests led by Iranian reformists. Authorities cracked down on protest leaders, jailing or exiling them. The bakery owner said she had lost hope in her ability to effect change.
“To be honest, I don’t trust any of them,” she said of Iranian politicians. “I think it’s foolish to get your hopes up.”
Others have followed a similar trajectory, including Arash, 38, a construction worker in Tehran, who said he had become disillusioned with the government’s response to the recent protests that erupted across the country after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in 2022.
Arash, who spoke only by his first name out of fear for his safety, said he had been arrested for taking part in protests and that there had been “extreme anger” among his friends this week.
“There’s this apocalyptic mentality that we should vote for the toughest candidate and that might make things worse” and mobilize people to topple the government, he said.
Arash doesn’t necessarily agree that’s the best strategy, saying earlier this week that he might still vote, but not because he thinks it will improve anything — rather, he believes greater voter participation will make it harder for the government to falsify the election results.
Lafferty said officials have not taken any steps to address the underlying concerns that are keeping people away from the ballot box.
“They want to have the best of both worlds: They want to claim high voter turnout and national legitimacy,” he said, “and at the same time, they want to narrow the field to a select few candidates that are very narrow even by the exclusionary standards of the system itself.”
If neither candidate receives 50 percent of the vote, a second round of voting between the two top vote-getters will take place next week. But a runoff could mean greater uncertainty, an outcome the supreme leader would likely want to avoid, said Suzanne Maloney, vice president and foreign policy director at the Brookings Institution, who specializes in Iran.
“A second round could invigorate the mobilization of Iranians interested in reforms and even more ambitious outcomes, threatening absolute control over the system,” she said.
Maloney said many of the “constraints” the Iranian government has introduced into the electoral process, such as rigorous vetting of candidates, are intended to minimize the unpredictability that voting brings to the political arena.
“Khamenei has traditionally been someone who doesn’t take many chances in domestic politics,” she said.
