Post-election Analysis

IRAN Presidential elections 2021: What the numbers say

With the final results already published, and after all the controversies about the disqualification of many heavyweights and the low turnout predictions that were somehow fulfilled, it is time to analyze in detail what the electoral outcome means. The figures show that out of 59,310,307 registered voters, 28,989,529 took their presidential ballot papers at the polling stations and got their voting stamp, but only 28,750,736 cast their ballots (238,793 did not cast it for some reason). There were also 100,231 uncollected invalid ballots in the ballot boxes, reducing the number of collected votes to 28,650,505. Out of them, 3,740,688 were blank and invalid votes –for the Iranian electoral system belongs to the same category-, with a final count of valid votes of 24,909,817. Adding all the categories of non-valid votes considered, it reached 14.07%, the highest proportion ever in Iranian presidential elections. Considering the first figure –voters who went to the polling stations and took their presidential ballot paper- the participation rate was 48.88%. However, if it were considered that the several categories of invalid and blank votes represent an intentional message to the Iranian establishment regarding the lack of representative candidates and only valid votes are counted, this would represent just 42%, very close to the pre-electoral opinion polls conducted, mainly by ISPA Polling