Dr Masoud Pezeshkian has been elected as the new president of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Of the total 30,530,157 votes counted, Pezeshkian garnered 16,384,403 votes while Jalili trailed behind with 13,538,179 ballots.
The gap between the two candidates was more than two million votes in the end.
The final results of Friday’s presidential runoff election have been announced by the country’s election headquarters after the completion of the counting of votes.
Masoud Pezeshkian and Saeed Jalili, the two candidates who secured the most votes in the June 28 snap presidential election, were vying for the top executive office of the Islamic Republic.
The eighth and final update was issued by the election headquarters at 6:45 AM (03:15 GMT). The first update came at 2:35 AM local time (23:05 GMT).
Mohsen Eslami, spokesperson for Iran’s election headquarters which runs under the auspices of the country’s interior ministry, said Pezeshkian prevailed over his opponent, Jalili.
Earlier, it appeared to be a close contest between seasoned lawmaker and former health minister, Pezeshkian, and former lead nuclear negotiator and head of the top security body, Jalili.
The counting of votes commenced immediately after the polls closed following a 16-hour voting process that saw more than 50 percent voter turnout, significantly higher than the June 28 election.
More than 30 million votes were cast as a large number of people flocked to polling stations in Tehran and other cities and villages across the country in response to the call made by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.
Voting was extended three times on Friday, each time by two hours, after 6:00 PM local time when the polling was supposed to close as per the constitutional requirement of a 10-hour voting period.
The voting lines finally closed at midnight, after which the vote counting began at thousands of polling stations scattered across the country, including more than 6,000 in the capital, Tehran
The snap presidential election was called after President Ebrahim Raeisi passed away in a helicopter crash with seven other officials in northwestern Iran on May 19.
More than 61 million Iranians were eligible to vote in Friday’s election inside the country, in addition to around 10 million Iranians living abroad.
People exhibited tremendous patriotic fervor by coming out in large numbers to cast their ballots across the country on Friday with long queues spotted at polling stations in Tehran and other cities.
