Less Than 10% of Iranians Vote in Parliamentary By-elections

The vote tally from Iran's run-off parliamentary elections on May 10, conducted amid widespread voter apathy, shows that in Tehran and most major cities, over 90% of eligible voters stayed home.

The run-off elections were held for 45 of the 290 seats in the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majles), with voting taking place in the capital and 21 other constituencies. This included two seats in Mashhad, Iran's second-largest city, four seats in Tabriz, and two seats in Shiraz, both ranking as the fifth-largest cities in the country.

In Tehran, candidates vied for sixteen of the city’s total 30 seats. The preliminary results show a turnout of between 7 and 8 percent, marking the lowest voter participation in the history of the Islamic Republic. In the Greater Tehran Area alone, 7.75 million people were eligible to vote.

This voter apathy stems from widespread dissatisfaction in recent years, particularly following the severe crackdown on the Woman, Life, Freedom protests from 2022 to 2023, and the extensive disqualification of candidates not considered insiders by the current regime. The deepening of poverty also has convinced many that the Islamic Republic is simply incapable of governing for the good of citizens.

The election watchdog, the Guardian Council, not only barred political rivals such as reformists, but also many conservatives in these elections, leaving the battle to the most hardline among supporters of the Islamic Republic and its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

The frontrunner in the run-off elections of Tehran, Bizhan Nobaveh who is a member of the ultra-hardliner Paydari Party has only gained around 270,000 votes, or 3.5 percent of eligible voters.

Nearly all candidates who have been elected so far were nominated by supporters of President Ebrahim Raisi.

Seyed Mahmoud Nabavian was the front runner in Tehran in the March elections with 597,000 votes, the least for a Tehran frontrunner in all elections since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

Nabavian was among the fourteen candidates whose number of votes was over the minimum required to be elected in the first round on March 1, with 100,000 less than his own votes in 2016 when he came 52nd among the candidates in the capital. In the 2016 elections the 30th ranking candidate had over a million and the frontrunner, reformist Mohammadreza Aref, was elected with 1.6 million votes.

Turnout in Mashhad, Shiraz, and Tabriz is so far around 8, 15, and 8 percent, respectively.

Concerned about possible adverse consequences if they do not vote, in recent years many eligible voters, particularly civil servants, have voted, but cast blank or void ballots in protest to absence of acceptable candidates or to the general political, cultural, and economic policies of the regime. In the presidential elections of 2021, blank and void votes amounted to 3.7 million, around 13 percent of all votes.

The regime has always been deeply concerned about low turnout because officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, have always boasted that higher turnout in Iranian elections in comparison with some Western countries was proof of the regime’s legitimacy and popularity with its citizens.

Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi, however, has thanked the Iranians for “creating an epic” as Iranian officials including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei usually say about turnout in elections.