İmamoğlu doubles Erdoğan’s vote, breaks record of 35 years

Ekrem İmamoğlu, winning the Istanbul re-run with 54.03 per cent of the vote and outdoing his rival Binali Yıldırım by 9 per cent, broke the record set by former Istanbul Mayor Bedrettin Dalan 35 years ago.

Unofficial results in today’s Istanbul election re-do show that İmamoğlu received the votes of over half the population of Istanbul, with a 84.4 per cent participation.

With this ratio, the CHP mayor elect doubled the 25.2 per cent vote current president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan won with in the 1994 local elections, when he started his political career as the mayor of Istanbul.

Before İmamoğlu, the record for the biggest percentage of votes won in the greater Istanbul municipality belonged to Bedrettin Dalan, who on March 26, 1984 was elected the first mayor of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (which was established as such three days before Dalan took office) with 49.7 per cent of the vote.

The mayors of greater Istanbul after 1980 and the percentages they won with are as follows:

2019 – Ekrem İmamoğlu: 54.2 per cent
2014 – Kadir Topbaş: 47.9 per cent
2009 – Kadir Topbaş: 44.7 per cent
2004 – Kadir Topbaş: 45.3 per cent
1999 – Ali Müfit Gürtuna: 27.5 per cent
1994 – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: 25.2 per cent
1989 – Nurettin Sözen: 35.6 per cent
1984 – Bedrettin Dalan: 49.7 per cent

Source: Ahval