Mohammad Afghari; Morteza Nouraei
Abstract
After the occupation of Iran by the Allies in August 1941 and the resignation of Reza Shah, the fourteenth National Consultative Assembly election took place in a completely different ...
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After the occupation of Iran by the Allies in August 1941 and the resignation of Reza Shah, the fourteenth National Consultative Assembly election took place in a completely different atmosphere. During this election, the Tudeh party managed to secure some parliamentary seats mainly from the northern region that were under the occupation of the Soviet Army. However, one Tudeh party candidates, Taghi Fadakar, stood out in Isfahan. Isfahan Located at the center of the country, Isfahan was not within the infiltration zone of neighboring north. Moreover, it was unlikely for a leftist candidate to win in a constituency known for its traditional and conservative culture. Hence, a separate study is necessary to analyze the fourteenth parliamentary election in Isfahan.The current research investigates the factors that were linked to the Tudeh party candidate’s victory in this election and presents the hypothesis that the main factor behind the success of Taqi Fadakar was a fragile coalition with two other conservative candidates, who had strong conflicts with the Tudeh Party. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, by extracting data from the unpublished documents of the archive of the National Assembly, a statistical analysis of the vote counting results is presented. According to findings, despite the common belief, most of Taghi Fadakar’s votes comes from rural parts of the constituency, not labor society of Isfahan. Therefore, without the coalition and rural votes, Fadakar's success would have been almost impossible.
