Pezeshkian leads in 2nd round of Iran's presidential election

By Ahmet Dursun

TEHRAN (AA) - Reformist lawmaker and former Health Minister Masoud Pezeshkian is leading in the second round of Iran's 14th presidential election, according to initial results as the vote continues to be counted.

Mohsen Eslami, spokesperson for the Election Center of the Iranian Ministry of Interior, announced that 2,547,381 votes have been counted.

The results show that Pezeshkian has garnered 1,263,874 votes, while conservative candidate Saeed Jalili has received 1,244,640.

Polls opened at 8 a.m. local time and were supposed to close at 6 p.m., according to the constitutional norm of a 10-hour voting process.

Around 61 million people are eligible to vote in the election, according to official data. In the 2021 election, 59.3 million people were registered to vote.

A total of 58,640 polling stations have been set up across the country to facilitate the voting process, similar to the previous round, with more than 6,000 in Tehran alone.

*Alperen Aktas contributed to the story from Istanbul