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Survey of Official Iran Results Casts Serious Doubt on Victory Claims

21 June 2009

A survey of Iran's election results, published today by Chatham House and the University of St Andrews, raises serious questions about the plausibility of the claimed victory and demonstrates irregularities in the official results.

Even the official statistics - obtained from the Ministry of the Interior - indicate that:

votes cast exceeded the number of eligible voters in two provinces
claims that Ahmadinejad swept the board in rural provinces flies in the face of previous results

The plausibility of Mr Ahmadinejad's claimed victory is called into question by figures that show that in several provinces he would have had to attract the votes of all new voters, all the votes of his former centrist opponent, and up to 44% of those who voted for reformist candidates in 2005.

Irregularities are found in conservative Mazandaran and Yazd provinces where votes cast exceeded the number of eligible voters.

Professor Ali Ansari said: 'The analysis shows that the scale of the swing to Ahmadinejad would have had to have been extraordinary to achieve the stated result'.

Thomas Rintoul said: 'The claimed results in minority provinces are particularity extreme, the numbers from Ilam, Lorestan and Hormozegan almost defy belief'.

Read paper >>

Details

Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran's 2009 Presidential Election
Paper published by Chatham House and the Institute of Iranian Studies, University of St Andrews.
Editor: Professor Ali Ansari, Director, Institute of Iranian Studies, University of St Andrews; Associate Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham House.
Research and analysis: Daniel Berman and Thomas Rintoul, Institute of Iranian Studies, University of St Andrews.

Contact

For press commentary:

Professor Ali Ansari
Institute of Iranian Studies, University of St Andrews/Chatham House, and author of 'Iran, Islam and Democracy: The Politics of Managing Change'.
+44 (0)7595 393 785

Thomas Rintoul
Institute of Iranian Studies, University of St Andrews
+44 (0)7590 364 630

Press Office:

Keith Burnet
Communciations Director, Chatham House
+44 (0)20 7314 2798 / +44 (0)7714 200 920

Sara Karnas
Press Office, Chatham House
+44 (0)20 7314 2787 / +44 (0)7958 669 785

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