Iranian Election Update

[Update 7:11 PM EST] Looks like Ahmadinejad has won this thing by a landslide. It doesn't even look like their will be a run off election.

According to Al Jazeera,

"According to Kamran Daneshjoo, chairman of the electoral commission at the interior ministry, after 21 million ballots were counted and 47.3 per cent of ballot boxes, Ahmadinejad had received 15,251,781 votes.

That compared to 4,628,912 for Mousavi, Daneshjoo said.

The figures from the interior ministry so far give Ahmadinejad 66 per cent of the vote and Mousavi with 31 per cent.

According to the interior ministry figures, the elections two other candidates Mohsen Rezai, a former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Mehdi Karroubi, an ex-parliament speaker - came distant third and fourth with 259,456 votes and 132,935 votes respectively."

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[Update: 11:07] One of the saddest things I have ever read, an Iranian girl writes about how she is a pretend supporter of Moussavi just so the "posh" guys will notice her. I don't think this says a lot in favor of Ahmedinjed but I think it provides a lot more insight into the what the average Iranian thinks then some of the news reports out there.

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The Polls in Iran are now officially closed at 10:30 EST. They were extended by one hour because of the massive turnout. We should know the results Saturday.

Reasons that Ahmadinejad looks good despite some of the media reports are these.

1.) Text Messaging in the country was down for most of the day, no doubt this hurt the communication of the opposition and the youth vote.

2.) Octavia Nasr of CNN reports on Twitter "Turnout in Iranian villages is as high as 90% says Al-Arabiya analyst. That's good news for President Ahmadinejad. Democracy at its best!"

3.) There was another rumor on Twitter about Chinese pens with invisible ink "Reports about Chinese pens whose ink turns invisible after a while is true. Take your own pen for election"

4.) An anecdotal report from From Saeed Kamali Dehghan reported in the Guardian newspaper.

"There is a lot of concern among Mousavi supporters about the polling centres in Iran's embassy in the United Arab Emirates (home to half a million Iranians), where there are no reformist representatives to monitor voting.

The interior ministry had also increased the numbers of mobile voting booths - which collect votes from small villages, hospitals and other hard-to-reach places - to 14,000, 10 times more than in the last elections.

Many analysts fear the lack of monitoring of mobile polls might also lead to widespread vote-rigging. Pejman Semnani, an 20-year-old Iranian university student I met in a Tehran polling booth, expressed his fears about mobile polls: "Mobile polls are able to change the results, everybody is concerned about the increase in the number of mobile polls, which reformist newspapers say is neither reasonable nor necessary."

Do not be alarmed by reports of high turnout. Many also believed that a high turnout would help Kerry in 04 and that turned out not to be the case. If reports of turnout in the rural countryside are true, then they are voting in even higher numbers then their urban counterparts. And clearly from the quote above, we can see how the Government is being used to help the incumbent.

People are betting big on Moussivi on Intrade and he even reached 80% last night. I got some more contracts going long on Ahmadinejad with an Avg of 25. Combined with my earlier contracts I had acquired I am basically betting at 2-1 odds that Ahmadinejed will win.