Quoting kidneystones: Agreed. This Wapo piece and poll predicting an even larger Ahmadinejad victory is worth a look.

There seems to be a pretty wide consensus among people knowledgeable about Iran that the elections was stolen, but I do think it’s important to point out that this isn’t a universal view. Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty, for example, write in the Washington Post that the result is similar to what their polls predicted. Ballen I don’t know, but Doherty’s a solid guy.

That said, Juan Cole raises a hugely important point of interpretation. Ballen and Doherty talk about how their mid-May poll showed Ahmadenijad with a 2-1 lead, about what the official results show. But they don’t mention the specific numbers. According to Professor Cole, “It found that the level of support for the incumbent was 34%, with Mousavi at 14%.” That seems like a 34-14 is very different from an official result in which Ahmadenijad’s support was in the sixties. In the domestic American context if you had an incumbent polling at

Quoting bjkeefe: I dunno. Just came across this from Matt Yglesias, which refers to the article you linked to, and I think it's about the same set of numbers:

[...]

Cole has a lot more to say about the numbers, and his post bears a look.