In an election upset in Iran, reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian, who advocated for moderate policies at home and improved relations with the West, won the presidential runoff election, beating his hardline rival, the Ministry of Interior said Saturday morning.

Pezeshkian, 69, a cardiac surgeon, got 16.3 million votes to defeat the hardline candidate, Saeed Jalili, delivering a blow to the conservative faction and a major victory for the reformist faction that had been sidelined from politics for the past few years. Jalili received 13.5 million votes.

After polls closed at midnight, turnout stood at 50 per cent, about 10 percentage points higher than in the first round of the election with about 30.5 million ballots cast in total, according to Iran’s interior ministry. The first round saw a record-low turnout because many Iranians had boycotted the vote.

However, the prospect of a hardline administration that would double down on strict social rules apparently spurred Iranians to turn up at the polls in slightly larger numbers.

“The end of the rule of minority over majority. Congratulations for the victory of wisdom over ignorance,” Ali Akbar Behmanesh, a reformist politician and head of Pezeshkian’s campaign in the province of Mazandaran, said in a post on the social platform X.

While Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wields the most power in the government, analysts said that the President was not without influence and can set domestic policies and shape foreign policy.

“A reform-minded President, despite all the limitations and failures of the past, is still meaningfully better — in some significant way it would put some constraint on the authoritarianism of the Islamic Republic,” said Nader Hashemi, a professor of West Asian studies at George Washington University. The special election was held because former President Ebrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash in May. With Pezeshkian’s victory, a new term will start, lasting four years.

In the days leading up to the election, Pezeshkian’s campaign rallies attracted larger and younger crowds. Prominent politicians including former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif campaigned for him across the country and told voters the choice was between “day and night”. The message that voters should turn up out of fear of Jalili resonated.