The sole reformist in Iran’s presidential election, Masoud Pezeshkian, will face the ultraconservative Saeed Jalili in a runoff, authorities said on Saturday, following a vote marred by historically low turnout.

Pezeshkian, 69, secured 42.4 per cent of the vote, while Jalili, a 58-year-old former nuclear negotiator, came second with 38.6 percent, according to voting figures announced by Mohsen Eslami, spokesman for Iran’s elections authority.

Conservative parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was next with 13.8 per cent of the vote, while the only other candidate, conservative cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi, received less than one percent.

‘None of the candidates could garner the absolute majority of the votes,’ Eslami said, adding that those who finished first and second would face each other in a runoff next Friday.

Only slightly more than 40 per cent of the 61 million electorate took part in Friday’s first round—a record low turnout for the Islamic republic.

The electoral authority said more than one million ballots were spoiled.

Out of Iran’s 13 previous presidential elections since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, only one has led to a runoff, which occurred in 2005.

The poll had been scheduled to take place in 2025 but was brought forward by the death of ultraconservative president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month.

The Guardian Council, which vets candidates, had originally approved six contenders.

But a day ahead of the election, two of them—the ultraconservative mayor of Tehran Alireza Zakani and Raisi’s vice president Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi—dropped out.

Both candidates, after the release of the final results, asked their supporters to vote for Jalili in the July 5 runoff.

Ghalibaf followed suit later, asking ‘all revolutionary forces and supporters’ to get behind Jalili’s bid for the presidency.

In the 2021 election that brought Raisi to power, the Guardian Council disqualified many reformists and moderates, prompting many voters to shun the election.

The turnout then was just under 49 per cent, which at the time was the lowest in any presidential election in Iran.

Friday’s vote took place amid heightened regional tensions over the Gaza war, a dispute with the West over Iran’s nuclear programme and domestic discontent over the state of Iran’s sanctions-hit economy.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had called on people to participate in the vote.

Opposition groups, especially in the diaspora, meanwhile called for a boycott, questioning the credibility of elections.

Pezeshkian is a heart surgeon who has represented the northern city of Tabriz in parliament since 2008.

He served as health minister under Iran’s last reformist president Mohammad Khatami, who held office from 1997 to 2005 and has endorsed Pezeshkian’s bid in the current elections.

Pezeshkian criticised Raisi’s government for a lack of transparency during nationwide protests triggered by the September 2022 death in police custody of Mahsa Amini.

Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, had been arrested for allegedly violating the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women.

In recent campaigning, Pezeshkian called for ‘constructive relations’ with Washington and European countries in order to ‘get Iran out of its isolation’.

Jalili, Iran’s former nuclear negotiator, has maintained his uncompromising anti-West stance.

The 58-year-old has held several senior positions in the Islamic republic, including in Khamenei’s office in the early 2000s.

He is currently one of Khamenei’s representatives in the Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s highest security body.

On Saturday, the reformist newspaper Sazandegi ran the headline ‘Long live hope’ on its front page, while the state-run Iran daily hailed what it called a ‘strong’ turnout.

Regardless of the result, Iran’s next president will be in charge of applying state policy outlined by the supreme leader, who wields ultimate authority in the country.

Earlier, the Tasnim news agency said militants in southeast Iran attacked a vehicle carrying ballot boxes in Sistan-Baluchistan province.

Two policemen were killed and others were injured in the attack, the agency added.