{"id":381,"date":"2009-06-12T09:03:31","date_gmt":"2009-06-12T09:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2009\/06\/iran-votes-moussavi-hope-and-c.html"},"modified":"2009-06-12T09:03:31","modified_gmt":"2009-06-12T09:03:31","slug":"iran-votes-moussavi-hope-and-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/06\/iran-votes-moussavi-hope-and-c.html","title":{"rendered":"Iran votes for hope and change"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a historic day and potentially a turning point for the future of the Middle East – Iran is voting. If you want to play political junkie, stay tuned to Twitter, where you can follow #IranElection tweets out of Iran<\/a> via the geolocated search. I also recommend following @mahdi<\/a> and @Kawdess<\/a>, for links and other info. Also, keep an eye on the Intrade electronic market, where reformist candidate Moussavi is leading<\/a> Ahmadinejad by over 2:1<\/a> (in terms of current stock price).<\/p>\n

Early reports indicate huge turnout<\/a>, with gigantic lines at polling stations and extended hours. My feeling is that Ahmadinejad’s campaign probably motivated a lot of people to come out and vote, and turnout increases the chance that Ahmadinejad will be defeated. Unfortunately there’s more than one reformist candidate, but then again so too is there more than one non-reformist one, so hopefully these factors will wash. Moussavi is notable in that his wife is also a prominent public face of the campaign, one which Ahmadinejad attacked personally on television, so that should be good to motivate women to the polls as well. Also, the burgeoning youth demographic is very motivated in Moussavi’s favor as well.<\/p>\n

The parallels to the 2008 US election are striking – a candidate representing change against the very symbol of the nation’s decline, with the economy playing a central role. Moussavi is not Obama in terms of his rhetorical skill or telegenic visage, but he is indeed the candidate of hope and change for Iran. I am optimistic that Moussavi will win, though since Iran doesn’t have a Nate Silver equivalent<\/a> we have to wait the old fashioned way for the results.<\/p>\n

Related – great bundle of election-eve analyses<\/a> at The Daily Beast. Also, Razib crunches some numbers to see how polarized the Iranian electorate<\/a> may be. Finally, Roger Cohen has a nice article about the elections<\/a> that goes into detail about the political atmosphere, especially the role of Moussavi’s wife Zahra Rahnavard. All worth reading!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a historic day and potentially a turning point for the future of the Middle East – Iran is voting. If you want to play political junkie, stay tuned to Twitter, where you can follow #IranElection tweets out of Iran via the geolocated search. 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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}