Iranian Election Fallout

"Tomorrow at 5 p.m. (8:30 a.m. EDT) at Vali-ye Asr Square," some of the crowd chanted at Monday's march, referring to a major road junction in the sprawling city of some 12 million.

please compare the _absolute_ numbers in a graphfor example, AZARBAYJAN:2004-reform/centrist: 950,0002004-conservative: 350,0002009-reform/centrist: 837,0002009-conservative: 1,131,000so reform/centrist decreased by 10% and conservative trippled!? even as people get younger, economy worse, and achmadenijad more unpopular?

city-level returns posted by the Iranian Interior Ministry on their website? These were posted by "Pejman" and translated by "Shaahin" in the comments thread to your previous post: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/statistical-evidence-does-not-prove.html#comment-672782692382259870

Just from a cursory glance, you can see the official poll results don't make any sense. Look at one of the third party candidates, Karoubi. He is from Lorestan. in 2005, in the first round he took 55% of the vote in Lorestan. In these results, he takes only 5%.Extraordinarily unlikely.

Four interior ministry officials have been arrested for given results that were different from those announced by Ahmadinejad’s allies.

Four of the leading pro-reform newspapers have been closed or prevented from criticising the official election results

A member of a TV crew working for the Italian station RAI and a Reuters reporter were beaten by police in the capital. A BBC TV crew was threatened by police at one point, but demonstrators chased the police away. The correspondents of the German TV stations ARD and ZDF were forbidden to leave their hotel on 13 June.

Tehran Bureau: Faulty Election Data The best evidence for the validity of the arguments of the three opponents of the President for rejecting the results declared by the Interior Ministry is the data the Ministry itself has issued. In the chart below, compiled based on the data released by the Ministry and announced by Iran’s national television, a perfect linear relation between the votes received by the President and Mir Hossein Mousavi has been maintained, and the President’s vote is always half of the President’s…. Statistically and mathematically, it is impossible to maintain such perfect linear relations between the votes of any two candidates in any election — and at all stages of vote counting. This is particularly true about Iran, a large country with a variety of ethnic groups who usually vote for a candidate who is ethnically one of their own.

But, just a few hours later, a center that had been set up by Mr. Mousavi in Gheytarieh (in northern Tehran) for monitoring the election and vote counting, was attacked by armed security agents. They ransacked the center, destroyed computers, and attacked the staff. Supporters of Mr. Mousavi intervened and arrested 8 security agents. The police was called to take them to prison, but the police released the attackers.

Mr. Makhbalbaf then declared that, “I have been authorized by Mr. Mousavi’s campaign to officially declare that a political coup has taken place, in order to declare Mr. Ahmadinejad the victor.”

Protests also broke out on Saturday in the cities of Tabriz, Orumieh, Hamedan and Rasht, where crowds chanted for Mousavi.

On the basis of what we know so far, here is the sequence of events starting on the afternoon of election day, Friday, June 12. Near closing time of the polls, mobile text messaging was turned off nationwide Security forces poured out into the streets in large numbers The Ministry of Interior (election headquarters) was surrounded by concrete barriers and armed men National television began broadcasting pre-recorded messages calling for everyone to unite behind the winner The Mousavi campaign was informed officially that they had won the election, which perhaps served to temporarily lull  them into complacency But then the Ministry of Interior announced a landslide victory for Ahmadinejad Unlike previous elections, there was no breakdown of the vote by province, which would have provided a way of judging its credibility The voting patterns announced by the government were identical in all parts of the country, an impossibility (also see the comments of Juan Cole at the title link) Less than 24 hours later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene`i  publicly announced his congratulations to the winner, apparently confirming that the process was complete and irrevocable, contrary to constitutional requirements Shortly thereafter, all mobile phones, Facebook, and other social networks were blocked, as well as major foreign news sources.

The willingness of the regime simply to ignore reality and fabricate election results without the slightest effort to conceal the fraud represents a historic shift in Iran’s Islamic revolution. All previous leaders at least paid lip service to the voice of the Iranian people. This suggests that Iran’s leaders are aware of the fact that they have lost credibility in the eyes of many (most?) of their countrymen, so they are dispensing with even the pretense of popular legitimacy in favor of raw power. The Iranian opposition, which includes some very powerful individuals and institutions, has an agonizing decision to make. If they are intimidated and silenced by the show of force (as they have been in the past), they will lose all credibility in the future with even their most devoted followers. But if they choose to confront their ruthless colleagues forcefully, not only is it likely to be messy but it could risk running out of control and potentially bring down the entire existing power structure, of which they are participants and beneficiaries.

Dozens of reformist political leaders were arrested on Saturday night in Iran

Also arrested were Mohsen Mirdamadi, leader of the Iran Islamic Participation Front, the largest reformist party; Zahra Mojaradi, his wife; Saeed Shariati, a member of the party; Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, spokesman in the previous reformist government; and Ahmad Zaidabadi, a senior reformist journalist.Mostafa Tajzadeh and Behzad Nabavi of the Islamic Revolution Mojahedin Organisation, another reformist party, were also taken into custody.

Also arrested were Mohsen Mirdamadi, leader of the Iran Islamic Participation Front, the largest reformist party; Zahra Mojaradi, his wife; Saeed Shariati, a member of the party; Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, spokesman in the previous reformist government; and Ahmad Zaidabadi, a senior reformist journalist.

At a press conference around midnight, Mousavi declared himself "definitely the winner" based on "all indications from all over Iran."

"It is our duty to defend people's votes. There is no turning back," Mousavi said, alleging widespread irregularities.

Bringing any showdown into the streets would certainly face a swift backlash from security forces. The political chief of the powerful Revolutionary Guard cautioned Wednesday it would crush any "revolution" against the Islamic regime by Mousavi's "green movement."

By official estimates, there are currently 13 million to 15 million Iranians of marrying age; to keep that figure steady, Iran should be registering about 1.65 million marriages each year. The real figure is closer to half that.

The real estate boom was a disaster for middle-income Iranians, particularly young men seeking marriage partners. And many of those who have married and moved in with in-laws are finding that inflation is eating away at their savings, meaning it will take years, rather than months, to get their own place. The resulting strains are breaking up existing marriages — this past winter, local media reported that a leading cause of Iran's high divorce rate is the husband's inability to establish an independent household. Many others are concluding that marriage is best avoided altogether. (See the Top 10 Ahmadinejad-isms.)

Iran’s economy is facing at least three large imbalances. The most acute is in the balance of payments.

Already some candidates are whispering that they favor lowering the exchange rate (increasing the value of the rial relative to other currencies) in order to fight inflation. These candidates would lead voters to believe that they can have their cake and eat it too

In these times of frozen international credit markets and economic sanctions against Iran, the second option of foreign borrowing is less likely than it was in the 1990s, but the risk of state-owned enterprises racking up foreign debts using short-term credit from eager overseas suppliers is not altogether gone. This is precisely what they did in the early 1990s, which deepened the post-oil boom slump and halted Rafsanjani’s reforms. Anticipating devaluation and government bailout, these enterprises incurred $10 billion in new short term debt alone between 1991 and 1993. Their actions forced the highly anticipated devaluation of the rial by a factor of 27 during the same period and forced the government to accept this debt as its own.

Rafsanjani has created a multimillion-dollar electronic network under the aegis of the Expediency Council to set off alarm bells in case of suspicions of fraud, said one person close to his camp, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He's also dispatching members of his Kargozaran political party to monitor polling stations and the election desk at the Interior Ministry. He convened a regular series of meetings to alert journalists and activists to the possibility of cheating after Ahmadinejad purged longtime employees from the section of the ministry that monitors fraud about two months ago. "He has access to the intelligence systems of the government, and he can put pressure on the establishment," said Kaviani, who has attended the meetings. "The most important thing for him is to get rid of Ahmadinejad, no matter the cost, and he thinks that if there's no cheating Ahmadinejad won't win. All the efforts are to prevent Ahmadinejad to get 51%."

To help Mousavi further, Rafsanjani has thrown open the doors of the 300 branches of Azad University throughout the provinces to his supporters, allowing them to deliver speeches and organize inside their halls; they are often barred from using government facilities by local officials loyal to Ahmadinejad.

given foreign assets that rose 20 percent year-on-year to $85 billion in January, according to central bank data cited by local media.