people running for the post out of more than a thousand initial candidates, most of whom were disqualified by the Guardian Council, which is responsible for vetting by constitution for election. Rafsanjani, who had been regarded as the front-runner and had positioned himself as a centrist, was defeated by Ahmadinejad in the run-off, while reformist candidate Mostafa Moeen fared poorly and finished only fifth in the first round. This was the first presidential runoff in the history of Iran. Before the run-off took place, it was compared to the 2002 French presidential election, where the splintering of the left-wing vote similarly led to a run-off between the moderate Jacques Chirac and the far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen. The comparison was made because of the unexpected votes in favor of Ahmadinejad, the very close race, and the comparability of the political standings of Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad to those of Chirac and Le Pen. But after the results for the run-off were made public, the comparison was considered void due to the loss of the moderate candidate Rafsanjani, although Ahmadinejad's opponents formed an alliance against him. There was a total of 27,959,253 votes in the second round, slightly lower than the first round. Considering that the number of eligible votes was raised by about 150,000 people, the turnout was about 59.6%. The tabulated results follow: |- ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:center;" rowspan=2|Candidate ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:center;" colspan=2|1st round ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:center;" colspan=2|2nd round |- ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" |Votes ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" |% ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" |Votes ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" |% |- | style="text-align:left;" |Mahmoud Ahmadinejad | style="text-align:right;" | 5,711,696 | style="text-align:right;" | 19.43 | style="text-align:right;" | 17,284,782 | style="text-align:right;" | 61.69 |- | style="text-align:left;" |Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani | style="text-align:right;" | 6,211,937 | style="text-align:right;" | 21.13 | style="text-align:right;" | 10,046,701 | style="text-align:right;" | 35.93 |- | style="text-align:left;" |Mehdi Karroubi | style="text-align:right;" | 5,070,114 | style="text-align:right;" | 17.24 | style="text-align:right;background-color:#F4F4F4" colspan=2 rowspan=5| |- | style="text-align:left;" |Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf | style="text-align:right;" | 4,095,827 | style="text-align:right;" | 13.93 |- | style="text-align:left;" |Mostafa Moeen | style="text-align:right;" | 4,083,951 | style="text-align:right;" | 13.89 |- | style="text-align:left;" |Ali Larijani | style="text-align:right;" | 1,713,810 | style="text-align:right;" | 5.83 |- | style="text-align:left;" |Mohsen Mehralizadeh | style="text-align:right;" | 1,288,640 | style="text-align:right;" | 4.38 |- | style="text-align:left;" | Blank or invalid votes | style="text-align:right;" | 1,224,882 | style="text-align:right;" | 4.17 | style="text-align:right;" | 663,770 | style="text-align:right;" | 2.37 |- |style="text-align:left;background-color:#E9E9E9"|Total (turnout 62.66% and 59.6%) |width="75" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"| 29,400,857 |width="30" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"|100 |width="75" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"| 27,959,253 |width="30" style="text-align:right;background-color:#E9E9E9"|100