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More than half of Tehran's 30 seats will face runoff elections after the winning candidates failed to secure 20% of the vote
Hardliners won a majority of seats in Iran's parliamentary elections, which saw a record low turnout of 41% following calls for a boycott.
Friday's election, the first since nationwide protests in 2022, saw most moderate and reform-minded figures barred from running.
Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said at a press conference that 25 million of the 61 million eligible voters took part.
He also revealed that about 5% of ballots cast were “invalid” or invalid.
Hardliner President Ebrahim Raisi earlier praised the “passionate turnout,” which he described as an “extreme blow” to the Islamic Republic's opponents.
Analysts said low voter turnout was a sign of disillusionment with politics after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged people to vote.
In the last parliamentary election in 2020, around 42% of those eligible to vote voted. Previously, voter turnout was consistently above 50%.
The Iranian electoral center announced on Monday that 245 of the 290 seats in parliament had been decided in the first round.
The remaining 45 seats will go to the second round of runoffs as the winning candidates did not receive the required 20% of the vote.
In the capital Tehran and the surrounding province, only 14 candidates reached the electoral threshold, meaning there will be runoff elections for more than half of the 30 seats there.
Most nationally winning candidates are considered conservative hardliners who are loyal to the Islamic system of rule and oppose political or social freedoms.
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Watch: BBC's Carrie Davies visits a polling station in Tehran as voting begins
Conservatives also dominated Friday's separate elections for the Council of Experts – an 88-member clerical body responsible for appointing the next supreme leader in due course.
Ayatollah Khamenei – the Islamic Republic's most powerful figure and commander-in-chief – is 84 years old and the new assembly will meet for eight years.
As in the parliamentary elections, many potential candidates were disqualified by the Guardian Council, a hardline monitoring body made up of theologians and lawyers.
Among those excluded was former President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate who had previously served in parliament for 24 years.
Mr. Rouhani warned in January that such decisions would “undermine the nation's confidence in the system” but still came to the vote on Friday.
Another former president, reformist Mohammad Khatami, was among those who did not vote after warning last month that Iran was “very far from free and competitive elections.”
Jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights activist Narges Mohammedi called the elections a “sham” after calling the “ruthless and brutal repression” of the 2022 protests a “sham.”
The unrest was sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young woman arrested by moral police for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly.”
Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands arrested in the ongoing crackdown by security forces, which have portrayed the protests as a “riot.”