The turnout was higher than Tehran in smaller cities, where citizens have more incentive to vote if the candidates promise better schools and hospitals, improved roads, faster internet, more ethnic inclusion and even individual patronage. As the American sanctions have debilitated the Iranian economy, greater participation in parliamentary elections offers the provinces an opportunity to bargain for a better share of the shrinking pie from Tehran.

In Tehran and other major cities, the parliamentary elections signal not only the citizens’ preferences for particular factions within the regime but also its legitimacy as a whole. Participation rates in the major cities fluctuate more often and reflect the political diversity of the candidates.

In the 2016 parliamentary elections, a high turnout enabled moderate reformist candidates to secure Tehran’s 30 seats in the Parliament. The conservative winners in Tehran, this weekend, were led by Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the former head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ air force wing, who is expected to be the speaker of the incoming Parliament. Victories like Mr. Qalibaf’s demonstrate that the Revolutionary Guard is ensuring its presence and domination of the Parliament as well.

Iranians who refused to vote expressed their anger and their disappointment with the Revolutionary Guard’s bloody crackdown on protesters in November, and its cover-up of the accidental shooting of a civilian airplane near Tehran in January. But the trouble with boycotting the elections is that it opens the doors of the Parliament for the most conservative wing of the political system.

Iranian society stands at an uncharted crossroad and the regime is bringing the apparatus of the state under the control of what it considers to be its most loyal elites, one election at a time. In a politically, economically and regionally tumultuous environment, doing so would allow an orderly transition to the next supreme leader.