Iran's President Hassan Rouhani won his second term presidential race on Saturday by a wide margin. The big win will see the moderate cleric serve four more years as the President of Iran, as he pushes for his agenda of greater freedom for Iran and its outreach across the world.
Rouhani, 68, secured an impressive lead of 57 percent in a presidential race which drew out at least seven of every 10 voters in the country. Rouhani's main rival in the race, hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi, secured 38 percent of the total votes.
As it became evident that Rouhani is leading the votes close to victory, some female drivers in the country held out victory sings and flashed their car lights on highways in the Iranian capital, Tehran.
"We made the victory again. We sent back Raisi to Mashhad, his conservative hometown in northeastern Iran," said Narges, a 43 year-old beauty salon owner, who declined to give her full name, Associated Press reported. She said she spent more than three hours outside waiting to vote, "but it was worth it."
The vote tallies were announced in a televised news conference by Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli. The announcement of the votes was based on a count of more than 99 percent of the ballots. According to Fazli, Rouhani secured around 23.5 million votes of the 41.2 million ballots cast across the country. Reports state that Iran has a total of 56.4 million eligible voters.
Rouhani, previously, had won the presidential elections in 2013 securing 51 percent of the votes. The turnout of the voters for that year was 73 percent.
Iran's president is the second-most powerful figure within the country's political system. The most powerful leader in the system is the supreme leader, who is chose by a clerical panel and has the final say in all the state matters.
