DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Early results from Iran’s presidential runoff election show reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian narrowly ahead of hard-liner Saeed Jalili, state television reported early Saturday.
The early results, reported by Iran’s election authority on state TV, said Pezeshkian leads with 2,904,227 votes trailed by Jalili with 2,815,566 votes.
Mohsen Eslami, the election spokesman, said the result came from 5,819,911 counted votes in 13,277 polling stations.
He did not say what percentage of the votes had been counted or give a turnout figure for Friday’s election. There are some 60,000 polling stations and more than 61 million eligible voters in the country of 85 million.
Government officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei predicted a higher participation rate as voting got underway, with state television airing images of modest lines at some polling centers across the country.
However, online videos purported to show some polls empty while a survey of several dozen sites in the capital, Tehran, saw light traffic amid a heavy security presence on the streets.
Polls closed after midnight, after voting was extended as had become tradition in Iran. Iranian state TV said initial results were expected on Saturday.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.