Masoud Pezeshkian could benefit if turnout is higher during an expected second round next Friday.
The latest numbers from election headquarters at the Ministry of Interior on Saturday morning showed the moderate Pezeshkian was ahead with 8.3 million votes from a total of just more than 19 million ballots counted, trailed by former nuclear negotiator Jalili with more than 7.1 million votes.
Conservative parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, with 2.6 million votes, and conservative Islamic leader Mostafa Pourmohammadi, with 158,314 votes, are out of the race. Two other candidates, Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani and government official Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, dropped out.
The snap election comes within the 50-day constitutionally mandated period to select a new president after Ebrahim Raisi and seven others, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, died in a helicopter crash on May 19.
Like all major elections in the past four years, the vote on Friday saw low turnout. The Interior Ministry has yet to announce official turnout figures.
The lowest presidential turnout in the more than four-decade history of the Islamic republic was the one that got Raisi into office, with 48.8 percent. At 41 percent, the parliamentary election in March and May had the lowest turnout of any major polls since Iran’s 1979 revolution.
The voter apathy comes as many are disillusioned in the aftermath of deadly nationwide protests in 2022 and 2023, and as the economy continues to deal with myriad challenges including more than 40 percent inflation due to mismanagement and United States sanctions.
A higher turnout appears likely if Iranians vote in the July 5 run-off, which is expected, since it would present a clearer choice between two opposing camps.
Pezeshkian, a prominent politician and former health minister, is backed by former centrist and reformist presidents and other top figures. He has promised to lift sanctions by restoring the country’s comatose 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, and to bridge the widening gap between the people and the establishment.
Jalili, a senior member of the Supreme National Security Council, has promised to bring inflation down to single digits and boost economic growth to a whopping 8 percent, along with fighting corruption and mismanagement.
Pezeshkian was the only moderate of six people approved to run by the Guardian Council, the constitutional body that vets all candidates.
His backers have presented him not as a miracle worker, but as a prospective president who could make things slightly better while claiming a victory for Jalili would signal a major backslide.
Jalili’s name is tied with years-long nuclear negotiations in the late 2000s and early 2010s that ultimately led to Iran’s isolation on the global stage and the imposition of United Nations Security Council sanctions.
The hardline politician, who has been trying to become president for more than a decade, blames the camp backing Pezeshkian for compromising the country’s nuclear programme as part of the landmark accord signed in 2015, which then US President Donald Trump reneged on in 2018.
Accusing his opponent of inefficiency, Jalili and other conservatives have claimed a Pezeshkian victory would only mark a third administration of former centrist President Hassan Rouhani.
Follow live updates on the results here.