DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran will hold a runoff presidential election pitting a little-known reformist against a hard-line former nuclear negotiator after results released Saturday showed the lowest-ever poll turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.

More than 60% of voters cast no ballot in the race that saw reformist Masoud Pezeshkian top Saeed Jalili, who competed alongside two other hard-liners.

With Jalili now alone in facing the cardiac surgeon, Pezeshkian’s campaign would need to draw voters to the July 5 runoff in an election they’ve otherwise not taken part in as public anger hardens following years of Iran facing economic hardships and mass protests under its Shiite theocracy.

“Let’s look at it as a protest in its own right: A very widespread choice to reject what’s on offer — both the candidates and the system,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa program. “That tells us a lot about public opinion and apathy, frustration. It sort of brings it all together.”

Of the 24.5 million votes cast in Friday’s election, Pezeshkian got 10.4 million while Jalili received 9.4 million, election spokesman Mohsen Eslami announced. Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf got 3.3 million, while Shiite cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi had over 206,000 votes.

Iranian law requires that a winner gets more than 50% of all votes cast. If not, the race’s top two candidates advance to a runoff a week later. There’s been only one other runoff presidential election in Iran’s history: in 2005, when hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defeated former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

As has been the case since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women and those calling for radical change have been barred from running, while the vote itself will have no oversight from internationally recognized monitors.

There were signs of the wider disenchantment of the public with the vote. More than 1 million votes were voided, according to the results, typically a sign of people feeling obligated to cast a ballot but not wanting to select any of the candidates.

The overall turnout was 39.9%, according to the results. The 2021 presidential election that elected Ebrahim Raisi saw a 48.8% turnout, while the March parliamentary election saw a 40.6% turnout.

There had been calls for a boycott, including from imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi. Mir Hossein Mousavi, one of the leaders of the 2009 Green Movement protests who remains under house arrest, has also refused to vote along with his wife, his daughter said.

There’s also been criticism that Pezeshkian represents just another government-approved candidate.

In a documentary on the reformist candidate aired by state TV, one woman said her generation was “moving toward the same level” of animosity with the government that Pezeshkian’s generation had in the 1979 revolution.

Jalili, once described by CIA Director Bill Burns as “stupefyingly opaque” in negotiations, likely would have won outright had the three hard-liners not split Friday’s vote. Jalili is known as the “Living Martyr” after losing a leg in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and is famous among Western diplomats for his haranguing lectures and hard-line stances.

Raisi, 63, died in the May 19 helicopter crash that also killed the country’s foreign minister and others. He was seen as a protégé of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a potential successor.

Still, many knew him for his involvement in the mass executions that Iran conducted in 1988, and for his role in the crackdowns on dissent that followed protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman detained by police over allegedly improperly wearing the mandatory headscarf, or hijab.