Presidential elections were held in Iran on 18 June 2021, the thirteenth since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. Ebrahim Raisi, the then Chief Justice of Iran, was declared the winner in a highly controversial election. The election began with the mass disqualification of popular candidates by the Guardian Council, and broke records of the lowest turnout in Iranian electoral history (around 49%),^[1] as well as had the highest share of protest blank, invalid and lost votes (around 13%)^[2] despite a declaration by the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, considering protest voting religiously forbidden (haraam) as it would "weaken the regime."^[3] Reporters Without Borders reported 42 cases of journalists being summoned or threatened for writing about candidates,^[4] and the chief of the police threatened people who discouraged others to vote.^[5]

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2021 Iranian presidential election

← 2017 18 June 2021 2025 →
Turnout	48.48% ( 24.85 pp)
Nominee Ebrahim Raisi Mohsen Rezaee Abdolnaser Hemmati Party CCA RFII ECP Popular vote 18,021,945 3,440,835 2,443,387 Percentage 72.35% 13.81% 9.81%
Results by province
President before election Hassan Rouhani MDP Elected President Ebrahim Raisi CCA

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The Guardian Council announced the approval of seven candidates after the wide disqualification of prominent candidates, including Ali Larijani, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (the former president of Iran), and Eshaq Jahangiri (the Incumbent first Vice President), among others,^[6] which provoked many activists and candidates to call for boycotting the election,^[7] including Ahmadinejad, who said that he would neither participate nor recognize the election. Hassan Rouhani, the incumbent Iranian president, could not run for re-election under the constitution of Iran as he had already served his maximum two consecutive terms.

Considered a "show election" to elect the handpicked candidate of the Iranian Supreme Leader,^[8] the elections were the first in Iranian history in which the reported number of invalid ballots, 3.84 million, outnumbered every non-winning candidate; the second-placed Mohsen Rezaee received 3.44 million votes.^[9] The elections were widely described as "neither free nor fair", a "sham", and a "selection" by different international human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch^[10] and the Center for Human Rights in Iran,^[8] and others called for an investigation into Raisi's role as an overseer in the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners.^[11][10]

The President of Iran is elected for a four-year term by universal adult suffrage with a minimum voting age of 18. The presidential term is renewable once in a consecutive manner. It is the country's highest directly elected official, the chief of the executive branch, and the second most important position after the Supreme Leader. Under Iran's political system, the Supreme Leader holds much more power than the President.^[12]

According to Islamic Republic of Iran's constitution, any Iranian citizen who believes in Shia Islam, loyal to the Constitution, the ideology of Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist and the Islamic Republic can participate in election as a presidential candidate. An institution called the Election Monitoring Agency (EMA), managed by the Guardian Council vets registered candidates and selects a handful to run in the election.^[13]

The Guardian Council does not publicly announce the reason for rejections of particular candidates, although those reasons are privately explained to each candidate. Women are not constitutionally restricted from running; however, all women who registered as candidates have been excluded from standing for election by the Guardian Council.^[14][15] "We have not rejected any woman due to being a woman", the spokesman of the Guardian Council said. He clarified that there is no obstacle for women's registration in the elections.^[16]

Those approved by the Guardian Council are put to a public vote on the weekend. The winner is the candidate who receive a majority (50% plus one) votes. If no candidate receives enough votes another election is held between the two candidates with the most votes the following Friday.^[17] Iranians who voted during the election receive a stamp that indicate so on their birth certificates.^[18]

According to the constitution, once the result is known, the Supreme Leader must sign the decree of the elected president, and if he refuses to sign, the elected president will not assume the presidency. So far, Supreme Leaders have always signed the decree of the elected president.^[19][20] After that, the elected president must recite and sign an oath in a session of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, in the presence of the members of the Guardian Council and the head of the Supreme Court. In the Oath, the elected president must swear that he will guard the official religion (Islam), protect the Constitution and the Islamic Republic, and that he will dedicate himself to the service of the nation, its people, and its religion (among other things).^[17]

This section needs to be updated. The reason given is: Candidate positions are outdated. (January 2023)

The Guardian Council is responsible for approving candidates who have registered to run. The Guardian Council disqualified over 600 applicants, including all the women who had registered, ultimately approving seven candidates, three of whom withdrew days before the election.^[35]

The declared results showed a total of 28,750,736 people cast votes (48.48% of the eligible population), including 18 million votes for the victor of the election, Ebrahim Raisi. Mohsen Rezai was the candidate receiving the most votes as a non-winner with 13.81% of the valid votes, although his votes were lower than the number of blank, invalid, or lost votes.

The results of the election broke many national records. The lowest turnout in an Iranian election in four decades (since the 1979 Iranian Revolution) was recorded,^[106] the largest share of non-valid and non-received issued voted by far were recorded (13.1% of the votes were counted as invalid), the second being 2005's 4.2%,^[107][2] the first time in Iranian history that no non-winner was able to break the invalid voter threshold, and the first time only a minority of the electoral roll engaged in the election.^[108] In the capital city, Tehran, only around a fourth of the eligible population voted, including the cast invalid votes.^[109] In some other major cities, such as Arak, Hamadan, Karaj,^[110] and Ahvaz,^[111] the largest number of the concurrent municipal elections votes were the invalid ones.

The exact number of votes each candidate received has not been yet released for every single Iranian province, though turnout for each is made public. The highest provincial turnout has gone to South Khorasan and the lowest one to Tehran, with around 74% and 34% respectively, and this figure does include the unusually large number of invalid/blank voters as voters.^[112] In some provinces with historically high turnouts, the figures underwent a sharp drop in this election, making voters in some large provinces into a minority (made bold here), while others lost big amounts of vote while still keeping the majority. Some examples are Tehran (66% to 34%), Alborz (80% to 41%), Yazd (93% to 58%), Qazvin (83% to 52%), Mazandaran (91% to 60%), and Isfahan (74% to 43.8%). Twelve provinces in total recorded a turnout below 50%, a figure which went to no province in the previous election.^[113]

Because whether an adult has participated in the previous elections or not is recorded in his/her identity card and subsequently considered in job interviews and some other situations, a large number of people have historically chosen to boycott the election and get a stamp in the ID at the same time, by voting a protest vote (voting blank or jokingly voting for non-existent/comical characters or even carrying the ballot with them out of the polling station), contributing to a very large share of votes being invalid/non-received, a phenomenon that is much more pronounced in this election (around thirteen percent of the votes being invalid).^[2]

For this reason, the ratio of received valid votes to all issued ballots is occasionally calculated by some sources and compared together and/or to that of the previous elections. For example, Alborz province, which had a turnout figure close to 80% in the 2017 Iranian presidential election but fell to 41% in 2021,^[113] had only 48.79% of its votes being valid,^[114] which could mean that only around 20% of the eligible population of the province have voted, of which only a minority have voted for Raisi.

Upon being declared the winner, Raisi was congratulated by three of his four competitors on 19 June,^[115] and president Rouhani paid a congratulatory visit to him that evening.

Jamal Arf, the head of the Election Office, announced updated details of the results after gathering details of votes from 91 ballot boxes and departments monitoring the elections across the country. Per the updated results, Raisi received more than 18 million votes. Meanwhile, 100,231 invalid votes that were cast were not collected and thus kept out of the count. While 28,989,529 turned up for the election, only 28,750,736 cast their vote.^[116]

By province

More information Name, 2017 Provincial ...

Iranian provinces and capitals turnout, 2021 and 2017^[117]

Name	2021 Provincial	2017 Provincial	Provincial Swing	Province Capital	2021 Capital Turnout
Alborz	41.35	79.1	37.75	Karaj	31.5
Ardabil	54.93	74	19.07	Ardabil	46.2
Azerbaijan, East	44.25	69.63	25.38	Tabriz	30
Azerbaijan, West	46.78	68.74	21.96	Urmia	44.1
Bushehr	58.73	71.29	12.56	Bushehr	48.3
Chahar Mahaal and Bakhtiari	54.38	77.82	23.44	Shahrekord	39.9
Fars	48.73	71.64	22.91	Shiraz	33.3
Gilan	57.35	82.84	25.49	Rasht	33.2
Golestan	61	78.47	17.47	Gorgan	45.1
Hamadan	46.48	73.8	27.32	Hamadan	39.8
Hormozgān	58.7	78.64	19.94	Bandar Abbas	51
Ilam	63.11	80.27	17.16	Ilam	47.9
Isfahan	43.81	73.99	30.18	Isfahan	34.6
Kerman	60.58	74.18	13.6	Kerman	50.4
Kermanshah	46.04	72.98	26.94	Kermanshah	34.9
Khorasan, North	63.97	80.72	16.75	Bojnourd	56.5
Khorasan, Razavi	55.09	77.4	22.31	Mashhad	45.7
Khorasan, South	74.38	85.22	10.84	Birjand	60.1
Khuzestan	49.98	70	20.02	Ahvaz	36.2
Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad	62.59	71.22	8.63	Yasuj	34.5
Kurdistan	37.37	58.72	21.35	Sanandaj	26.6
Lorestan	48.16	60.15	11.99	Khorramabad	43.6
Markazi	48.94	75.58	26.64	Arak	38.4
Mazandaran	60.75	90.95	30.2	Sari	56
Qazvin	52.3	82.9	30.6	Qazvin	45.4
Qom	53.17	78.1	24.93	Qom	53.2
Semnan	54.24	80.48	26.24	Semnan	39.5
Sistan and Baluchestan	62.75	75.4	12.65	Zahedan	49.2
Tehran	34.39	66.2	31.81	Tehran	24.1
Yazd	58.45	93.4	34.95	Yazd	43.6
Zanjan	53.65	75.92	22.27	Zanjan	44.4
Iran	48.44	73.33	24.89	Tehran	24.1

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