Stop worrying, everyone. Even though Iran's election results have never been announced so quickly, and even though the loser has been placed under house arrest, the reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was what the people wanted. A poll proves it!

Ken Ballen and Patrick Dohery polled 1,001 Iranians last month, and they found Ahmadinejad leading "by a more than 2 to 1 margin." Almost a third of respondents were still undecided but basically everyone else loved Mahmoud. And they were not just lying to pollsters because they were worried that maybe someone was going to arrest them! (That is the Iranian version of "the Bradley effect.")

Some might argue that the professed support for Ahmadinejad we found simply reflected fearful respondents' reluctance to provide honest answers to pollsters. Yet the integrity of our results is confirmed by the politically risky responses Iranians were willing to give to a host of questions. For instance, nearly four in five Iranians — including most Ahmadinejad supporters — said they wanted to change the political system to give them the right to elect Iran's supreme leader, who is not currently subject to popular vote. Similarly, Iranians chose free elections and a free press as their most important priorities for their government, virtually tied with improving the national economy. These were hardly "politically correct" responses to voice publicly in a largely authoritarian society.

It is heartening to know that, as in America, Iranian voters generally refuse to vote in ways consistent with their own self-interest. Ahmadinejad must've had a lot of support in the Iranian heartland.

But all Nate Silver (from whom we got that nifty map!) will say is that "the statistical evidence is intriguing but, ultimately, inconclusive." Tell us what happened, number god!