Why is Iran seeing its lowest voter turnout ever?
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2024
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Iranians are voting for a new president – but the first round of the election saw the lowest voter turnout in the country’s history. Will more people turn out on Friday for the final round of the vote, or will this trend continue? And why has turnout been so low?
In this episode:
- Maziar Motamedi (@MotamediMaziar), Journalist
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by David Enders, Duha Mossad and Marcos Bartolomé. With Amy Walters, Manahil Naveed, Mohammed Zain Shafi Khan, Veronique Eshaya, and our host Kevin Hirten in for Malika Bilal.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our lead of audience development and engagement is Aya Elmileik. Munera Al Dosari and Adam Abou-Gad are our engagement producers.
Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio.
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@AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and YouTube
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Today, the race to be the next president of Iran is down to two. |
| 0:15.0 | We are now heading into a runoff, and there is a clear choice presenting itself to the people. |
| 0:23.7 | So why are so many voters deciding to stay home? |
| 0:29.5 | I'm Kevin Horton, and this is the take. |
| 0:44.8 | On Friday, Iran held a snap election to see who would replace former president Ibrahim Raeisi. |
| 0:46.4 | Raeisi was killed in a helicopter crash on May 19th. |
| 0:50.1 | Friday's election saw a record low turnout. |
| 0:53.7 | It's only the second time there's been a presidential runoff in Iran since the 1979 revolution. |
| 0:59.0 | There was a record low turnout of 40 percent. |
| 1:03.0 | And none of the four candidates secured a majority, |
| 1:06.0 | which means the top two candidates are now headed for a runoff that will take place on Friday. |
| 1:14.0 | Joining us now is Maziar Motamedi. |
| 1:17.6 | He's a Tehran-based journalist who's covered the voting for Al Jazeera. |
| 1:19.0 | Maziar, welcome. |
| 1:20.5 | Thank you for having me. |
| 1:26.9 | Why don't we start with the biggest surprise on Friday, which was just how few people turned out to vote. |
| 1:28.8 | What explains the bad turnout? |
| 1:38.9 | Yeah, so the first time, 60% of eligible Iranian voters chose to stay home and not vote. |
| 1:45.7 | And that also surprisingly left a reformist candidate on top. |
| 1:51.5 | It didn't give him a victory, but sending the runoff with a reformist on the top and then followed by the hardliner. |
| 1:53.2 | So that was very unexpected. |
... |
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