Was Iran’s election stolen? New study makes a forceful case
A report by the Chatham House in London and the Institute of Iranian Studies at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland shows that official Iranian election data raises many key questions about the June 12 vote.
By Dan Murphy | Correspondent 06.22.09
A statistical analysis of province-by-province voting in Iran’s June 12 presidential election makes a compelling case for wide-spread fraud in the vote that returned conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power and touched off days of bloody protests in Iran.
The report, “Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election” published by the Chatham House think tank in London and the Institute of Iranian Studies at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland, found instances of greater than 100 percent turnout in two provinces. It also found an improbable 90 percent turnout in four other provinces. The research was based official Iranian data.
In the immediate aftermath of the election, with defeated challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi and his supporters saying the election was stolen, political scientists cautioned that it was possible that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won, given the lack of accurate polling data before the election
Vastly different voting patterns
But the researchers found a pattern of voting widely at odds from past Iranian elections, including a surge in support for Ahmadinejad in rural areas where conservative candidates were deeply unpopular in Iran’s 1997, 2001, and 2005 elections.
In those elections “conservative candidates, and Ahmadinejad in particular, were markedly unpopular in rural areas,’’ the authors write. “That the countryside always votes conservative is a myth. The claim that this year Ahmadinejad swept the board in more rural provinces flies in the face of these trends.”
Ahmadinejad won more than 44 percent of reformist voters?
They also find that for Ahmadinejad’s support to be legitimate, in a third of Iran’s provinces he would have had to win over not only all of his former supporters, but all formerly centrist voters, all new voters, and “up to 44 percent of former reformist voters, despite a decade of conflict between these two groups.”
‘It’s the economy, stupid’
Juan Cole, a historian of the Middle East and an expert on Shiite Islam at the University of Michigan, called the results “fairly damning” noting that Iran’s economy has deteriorated sharply in the past year, something that almost always hurts incumbents in free and fair elections.
The paper also finds that while in past elections there were considerable differences in turnout from province to province, these regional differences declined sharply in the latest election. “The data seems to suggest that regional variations in participation have suddenly disappeared,’’ the authors wrote.
“This makes the lack of any sort of direct relationship between the provinces that saw an increase in turnout and those that saw a swing to Ahmadinejad all the more unusual,’’ they write. “The lack of a direct relationship makes the argument that Ahmadinejad won the election because of an increase in participation by a previously silent conservative majority somewhat problematic.”
Meanwhile on Monday, protestors continued to take to the streets of Tehran, though in small groups harried by riot police and helicopters. Iran’s highest elected authority, the Guardian Council, admitted on Monday to electoral “irregularities” in 50 of the nation’s 366 districts, but insisted that these problems were minor and did not effect the outcome of the election.
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2. dom youngross | 06.22.09
Iran should carefully study the US example — psychologically convince people they have only two mainstream choices in every election, without there being a nickel’s worth of difference between the two. Then there would be no need for vote rigging. Stupid people would self-censor.
3. cluedonym | 06.22.09
Firstly, I have no care for the election and no other reason for this comment other than how appalled I was after being initially drawn by the superfluous headline only to find this unsubstantiated rubbish in the article. Here is another view which, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to count.
“It also found an improbable 90 percent turnout in four other provinces”
This was made by ‘experts’ who happen to neglect a poll that was jointly commissioned by the BBC and ABC News, and conducted by an independent entity called the Center for Public Opinion (CPO) of the New America Foundation. The CPO has a reputation of conducting accurate opinion polls, not only in Iran, but across the Muslim world since 2005. The poll, conducted a few weeks before the elections, predicted an 89 percent turnout rate. Further, it showed that Ahmadinejad had a nationwide advantage of two to one over Mousavi.
“But the researchers found a pattern of voting widely at odds from past Iranian elections, including a surge in support for Ahmadinejad in rural areas where conservative candidates were deeply unpopular in Iran’s 1997, 2001, and 2005 elections.”
In fact, this elections result, where Ahmadinejad received 24.5 million votes to Mousavi’s 13.2 million votes, or 62.6 per cent to 33.8 per cent of the total votes mirrored the 2005 elections when Ahmadinejad received 61.7 per cent to former President Hashemi Rafsanjani’s 35.9 per cent in the runoff elections.
As for the “deeply unpopular rural areas” and “up to 44 percent of former reformist voters”…. Ahmadinejad belongs to an active political party that has already won several elections since 2003, Mousavi is an independent candidate who emerged on the political scene just three months ago, after a 20-year hiatus. It was clear during the campaign that Ahmadinejad had a nationwide campaign operation. He made over sixty campaign trips throughout Iran in less than twelve weeks, while his opponent campaigned only in the major cities.
I must reiterate that I am not trying to defend the election results, I am not arrogant enought to consider my opinion worthy of validation. I have no motive other than to rebut this article because it angered me….maybe that is the reason I can keep a somewhat balanced view on events concerning “the axis of evil”.
4. S Manji | 06.23.09
Hi - I think your article, re: Iranian Elections, is unbalanced.
[1] The Iranians have said they will release box-by-box figures of the poll. While we await these figures, where did Chatham House get their numbers from? Bearing in mind that the US has spent $400M prior to the Iranian Elections in trying to destabilise the country, how do we know this numberes are not doctored intelligence. Have we so soon forgotten the doctored intelligence from the Iraq war?
[2] Most of the protests are in the north of Tehran. This is where the “rich and irreligious” Iranians live - who still hanker for the days of the Shah. Outside this area, people are very solidly behind Ahmedinejad - as seen by the tens of thousands who rallied to support him last week (very little mention of this in international media).
[3] Weeks before the elections, Ahemedinejad was given a 2-1 lead against his opponents by US-sponsored polls. Now we are “surprised” that this has happened?
[4] Ahmedinejad announced victory hours after the election! So what? So did Mousavi. Both were bragging before results were due.
[5] The Election Council has, in addition to releasing box-by-box results, agreed to recount 10% of all results at random. Surely, this seems reasonable. Why is this not being mentioned? Bush never gave the same courtesy to Gore when he “stole” the election.
[6] I think you need to do an article detailing how US$ 400M spent in Iran to destabilise the nation might be used.
For example:
[a] Supporting MKO terrorists to instigate violent protests.
[b] Faking millions of SMS/Twitter messages to lead/mislead people.
[c] Hyping the opposition and creating misleading expectations.
[d] Lots of other things …
The bottom line is that [a] $400M is a lot of money, and [b] it is being used. So it would be a great piece of journalism to figure out how.
I read many of your articles, because I find them balanced and informative - with bias squarely in the background (no one can remove their bias completely). In this case, I think you are being led - just as we all were prior to the Iraq war.
Thx and regards.
S Manji.
5. mike | 06.23.09
what if anything can be done to change the result. there were no shortage of irregularities in florida and nothing was done.
6. Concerned Citizen | 06.23.09
U.S. officials of course are silent, they have no moral authority in criticizing foreign elections. The same thing happened in Florida in the 2000 Presidential election, vote rigging at the highest levels in the state enabled by the Republican led Supreme Court. And major irregularities surfaced again in Ohio in 2004. It was only Bush himself who finally after eight years demonstrated so clearly how rigged elections can lead to disasterous outcomes for a nation.
7. Nomas Kakita | 06.23.09
Most Americans don’t know that Chatham House is a english think thank funded by the British govt. It’s like the CIA’s Rand corp. in the US.
8. Anon | 06.23.09
In response to Andy H-
A clip from an AP article last week:
“How do you count almost 40 million handwritten paper ballots in a matter of hours and declare a winner? That’s a key question in Iran’s disputed presidential election.
International polling experts and Iran analysts said the speed of the vote count, coupled with a lack of detailed election data normally released by officials, was fueling suspicion around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s landslide victory.”
You don’t have to stuff ballots if you aren’t counting the individual votes - you just make the numbers up.
9. Carolyn | 06.23.09
Thank you for this insight into the Iranian elections. Chatham House, one of the sources used, is a highly respected non-profit, NGO, international think tank. (The confidentiality rule was instituted to encourage honest, frank debate of issues.) The Chatham House findings are helpful… even though misrepresented by some commenters, in understanding an election within the complex background of Iran’s highly educated society with its strong military and religious/clerical authoritian elements.
10. have Iranian friends | 06.23.09
I have a friend who is from Iran and I asked her what she thought about the possibility of the election not being rigged. She says that Ahmadinejad winning in certain provinces at equal rates to everyone other province is absolutely ridiculous. Ethnicity and religion matter to voters, and Ahmadinejad offends certain factions every time he goes on TV. The only way the results would have come out the way they did is if people were brainwashed. It’s like having a candidate do equally well in Massachusetts and Mississippi: it’s possible to win both states, but likely not by the same margins.
Also, the candidate who came in last got fewer votes than the blank votes that were discarded. This guy isn’t a nobody- he came in 3rd last election and got millions of votes! His support base is not unlikely to disappear so completely.
To Iranian eyes, not only did Ahmadinejad cheat, he cheated blantantly.
11. Stephen | 06.23.09
The mass-demonstrations should not totally convince us that the will of the Iranian people is not behind Amadinejad. Iran has a large, working-class, deeply conservative, deeply religious “Silent Majority”. And they don’t ‘Twitter’.
12. Andrey | 06.23.09
To those who wonder how the elections may be rigged when votes are counted manually I present an example form the past European country’s comunist “election” ihe 1970’s. In a city district voting station a group of volunteers counted votes manually. They had about three hours to do so after closing of the voting, and they succeeded. The numbers were filled in the voting report; the voting rate was approximately 60% and the communist candidates “won” (there were no others on a ballot, so the only option was to not circle any name or write other name by hand at the risk of invalidating the ballot). Shortly before the deadline a man walked to the room, gave an envelope to the chair of the group saying “these are your results”, and took the actual report. The new “results” were 99.9% voting and overwhelming win of a communist candidate. Where there is a will, there is a way. I’d look more carefully at the statistical analyses of the data from Iran. Maybe they say something - though as Mr. Disraeli said in the past: “there are lies, darn lies and statistics”. Caveat emptor.
13. Lionstar | 06.23.09
It appears that your information is not entirely accurate on this article from more recent facts beginning to emerge from Iranian government officals being made public. The voices of the Iranian people have been heard around the world and their voices are saying very clearly they wnat freedom from the oppression of the Mullas. No western government has paid the people of Iran to take to the streets to be beaten or possibly murdered by the criminals called the Basij, the Iranian people have decided to do this of their own FREE WILL over the deception of Khamenei and Amadinejad.
The people of Iran have already won the Green Revolution, it’s just a matter of time before we see Khamenei aand Amadinejad removed from their offices, and both know this to be fact, why else have both of them virtualy disappeared since Khamenei made the speech where he blatantly lied to the Iranian people as well as the world. The credibility of the Iranian president and supreme leader is now non-exsistant in the eye’s of the world who now seem them as the so called “great satan” they have accused the United States of being, case in point, it is not americans beating and murdering the Iranian people it’s the Basij and Iranian police at the instructions of the Iranian government.
May god grant the people of the Green Revolution a swift victory over the oppressors and dictators that have been a plauge on Iran for thirty years, may he protect them from the violence being inflicted upon them by a blasphmas holy man who calls himself supreme leader, may god grant the Iranian people peace and prosperity in the day’s ahead. And may god grant me the wisdom to look upon the iranian people and see a great nation of couragous people with the respect and admiration they deserve.
14. Muhammad NaIya | 06.23.09
Probably the Iranians are right afterall. How come every manner of expert is coming withn the jaundiced view that Ahmadinejad did not truly win? All along Mir Mousavi and his ‘backers” have made outrageous claims. First it was a claim to victory, then demand for a recount and finally - with ewestern media backing - a re-run. To date neither Mousavi nor the liberal media hads produced a real evidence.
The youth are only used as canon fodder because Mousavi has not spelt any programme other than anti Ahmadinejad rhetoric. Unfortunately, eveb what we thouht was unbiased media,now the sing song is the same. Will the US ever tolerate sunbridled attempt to decide the outcome of an election on the pges of a hostile media?
15. ali,iran | 06.27.09
you’re guys better write about your own country’s affairs.you know nothing about Iran and it’s domestic problems,i wish you had lived in this country and known about it’s numerous problems,injustice,brutality and…just disappointed and frustrated of your own govs thinking that this guy is a massiha for the world i’m afraid that you’re terribley wrong.who said that the protesters are some elites living in northern Tehran????!!!!i myself am an Iranian middle class living in a small town of this country and didn’t vote for Ahmadinejad and know for sure that a lot of my friends and relatives didn’t vote for him.most of Iranian middle-class even can’t tolerate this guy speaking how can they support his policies???!!!you know nothing of this country’s history,just making hypothesis of your false imagination.
16. ron | 07.01.09
Chatham House report deeply flawed as it ignores the second round of the 2005 election and the 4 years of Ahmadinejads presidency where we nurtured the rural vote by visiting them and spending the oil wealth on them.
If we look at the 2005 election, in the first round Ahmadinejad got less than 20% of the vote but in the second round he got 62%, how? If we add up the vote of the 3 conservative candidates it still only comes to less than 40% (still short 6 million votes) and fewer people voted in second round so clearly reformist voters in huge droves must have switched sides to support Ahmadinejad when they saw he was fighting unpopular Rafsanjani in the second round. This is not unusual as the political grouping in Iran are very loose as voter loyalty is primarily to candidate not to group (they dont have political parties like labour/tory in uk).
Also in 2005 Ahmadinejads base was urban Tehran where we was their popular mayor - the rural support he has today is totally down to his policies in the last 4 years. Chatham House has chosen to ignore this.
17. ron | 07.01.09
The “greater than 100 percent turnout” is a red herring as this was also the case in previous elections. In Iran you can vote anywhere in the country, not just your town, and people travel for work, study, etc so they may vote away from home causing over 100% turnout (remember its more noticeable this time because of the high 85% voter turnout). Imagine if all the people who travel in to London decided to vote in London..
18. ron | 07.01.09
“how did they count 40 million votes so quickly” is explained by remembering that the votes were counted in local polling stations. There were 47,000 regular and 13,000 mobile polling stations (for small villages). So 39 million ballots split among 60,000 polling stations means each station only has 650 ballots to count which doesnt take long.
19. ron | 07.01.09
Its a fallacy to suggest Ahmadinejad won by the same amount everywhere. If we just look at Tehran we see Ahmadinejad lost Tehran city (central) to Mousavi but won decisively in the Tehran suburbs and hence overall he won Tehran.
Its clear this election was split along class lines more than anything else so there was no way Mousavis upper middle-class gucci crowd were going to out number Ahmadinejads peasants and workers.
20. Politics2008 | 08.20.09
The ruthless suppression of the opposition movement only concludes that Ahmadinejad is sitting on a needle and his power will fade away. It is a matter of time. As of now he holds the second or third rank in the power hierarki. If he wants to be the nr 1 one he has to topple the whole system. Since he is so power horney, I can see him trying this but with out any success. And btw the elections were rigged and the points goes as following:
- Mousavi lost in his hometown
- Karroubi having about 7 million of votes got 300 000 four years later
- Rezais vote sank during the poll broadcasts and were thrown into the discarded votes
- Ahmadinejad, began as an unknown presidential candidate, and went to a runoff where he landslided, and four years later he have had the same grassroot support?
The difference in electoral participation from 05 to 09 was at 20%. In 05 the it was at 65% in 09 it was at 85%. Have you sympathisers of legitimizing this crappy government ever think why the electoral participation was so high in Iran? Well it was because of the debates that was set by the state controlled iranian tv. The debates were set of 2 weeks before the elections. The mood changed in favour of the opposition in ways that couldnt be described. Perhaps everything you say about Chatham house in London is correct. But what was happening in Iran, and the mood change did happened there, no one can say otherwise. The polls that were taken by free terror predicting Ahmadinejad winning by a large or a modest margin were taken before the political debates, some time time in mid may. And the political mood in Iran were not as engaging as the 2 weeks prior to the elections. Here you are saying that iranian people have been manipulated into rioting against its own regime. Well I say not true!
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1. Andy H | 06.22.09
What the CHRISTIAN Science Monitor has ignored in the article are the actual numbers. Ahmadinejad won by 11 MILLION votes, not 10,000 or even 100,000 but by 11 MILLION. The voting in Iran is manual, no computers that can be easy hacked like the USA, but actual paper ballots & ballot boxes. Do you really think it is possible that they managed to stuff 11 million ballots? How much time would that take? How many people would be required? Certainly more than could be done quietly, or discreetly, or quickly.
Chatham House is funded by large corporations & nations. Its biggest donations come from America. It is hardly independent or objective. It is secretive and illuminati like. Chatham House founded The Chatham House rule (google it). It means that what is said inside Chatham House isn’t allowed to be repeated outside. Only officially published reports are allowed.