Ebrahim Raisi, the hardline head of Iran’s judiciary, has been hailed the country’s new president after his three main rivals congratulated him on his victory and preliminary results showed he had secured 17.8m votes, a huge 14.5m more than his nearest rival.

With 90% of the votes counted, Iranian officials said 28.6 million people had cast their ballots. More than 41 million did so in 2017.

Official results will be published later on Saturday, but it appears Raisi secured well over 50% of the vote, avoiding the need for a run-off.

His victory means all the arms of government, elected and unelected, are in the grip of conservatives, ending the uneasy dualism of the past eight years when the outgoing centrist president, Hassan Rouhani, found himself at odds with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and conservative clerics.

Rouhani’s presidency became increasingly unpopular as the US imposed sanctions that deprived ordinary Iranians of the economic benefits he had promised would come from signing the 2015 nuclear deal with Washington.

The conservative Mohsen Rezaei, and the centrist former head of the central bank Abdolnaser Hemmati both sent their congratulations to Raisi. Rezaei secured 3.3m votes and Hemmati 2.4m. Raisi secured 15.8m votes when he stood in 2017 and was soundly beaten.