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21 June 2009

Chatham House/St Andrew’s University report casts serious doubt on Iranian victory claims

Chatham House has published a paper titled Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election (available here as a pdf document).

Written by Professor Ali Ansari, Daniel Berman and Thomas Rintoul of the Institute of Iranian Studies, St Andrew’s University the report casts serious doubts on the plausibility of the claimed victory and demonstrates irregularities in the official results.

According to the press release (I just can’t work out how to copy salient ponts from the pdf document!) the official statistics indicate that:

  • claims that Ahmadinejad swept the board in rural provinces flies in the face of previous results
  • The plausibility of Mr Ahmadinejad's claimed victory is called into question by figures that show that in several provinces he would have had to attract the votes of all new voters, all the votes of his former centrist opponent, and up to 44% of those who voted for reformist candidates in 2005.
  • Irregularities are found in conservative Mazandaran and Yazd provinces where votes cast exceeded the number of eligible voters.
Professor Ali Ansari said: 'The analysis shows that the scale of the swing to Ahmadinejad would have had to have been extraordinary to achieve the stated result'. Thomas Rintoul said: 'The claimed results in minority provinces are particularity extreme, the numbers from Ilam, Lorestan and Hormozegan almost defy belief'."

This is just a summary of the executive summary. The whole paper is well worth reading. It certainly does confirm suspicions that the election was rigged an a gigantic scale
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3 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:54 pm

    Executive Summary

    Working from the province by province breakdowns of the 2009 and 2005
    results, released by the Iranian Ministry of Interior, and from the 2006 census
    as published by the official Statistical Centre of Iran, the following observations
    about the official data and the debates surrounding it can be made.

    · In two Conservative provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, a turnout of
    more than 100% was recorded.

    · At a provincial level, there is no correlation between the increased
    turnout, and the swing to Ahmadinejad. This challenges the notion
    that his victory was due to the massive participation of a previously silent Conservative majority.
    · In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that
    Ahmadinejad took not only all former conservative voters, and all
    former centrist voters, and all new voters, but also up to 44% of former
    Reformist voters, despite a decade of conflict between these two
    groups.

    · In 2005, as in 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates, and
    Ahmadinejad in particular, were markedly unpopular in rural areas.
    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.

    ReplyDelete
  2. jams o donnell10:58 pm

    Thanks for this Anonumous!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous11:24 pm

    I can't figure out how the "assumed take" numbers in figure 3 are calculated. Any help?

    ReplyDelete