Earlier we noted reports that election officials were calling a lopsided win for Ahmadinejad. But that’s now less clear. Apparently what election officials said, in a hastily called press conference following Mr. Mousavi’s press conference (in which he himself claimed victory), was that 19% of the vote had been counted and that President Ahmadinejad was up by roughly 69%.
Obviously that’s very different from calling the whole election by that margin. What’s more, there’s some suggestion these votes are coming disproportionately from rural areas, where Ahmadinejad claims his strongest support.
It’s not clear to me, candidly, whether the initial reports were incorrect, unclear or whether we misunderstood what we were hearing. But we’ll keep you up to date on the very latest.
