I told you!
Venezuela’s Maduro Declares Victory and Third Six-Year Term After Disputed Election
Strongman Nicolás Maduro claimed an unlikely victory in Venezuela’s presidential election Sunday, securing a third six-year term in a result that opposition leaders contested, saying the regime had likely falsified the vote count.
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Almost immediately, residents around Caracas began banging on pots to protest the result, which was expected to be contested by the opposition with the help of its allies, including the U.S. At the same time, Maduro loyalists gathered outside the Miraflores presidential palace to celebrate the win with a concert.
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The regime’s announcement was quickly denounced by both the opposition and its allies, including the U.S.
Speaking from Japan, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the Biden administration had “serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people.”
He said that “the international community is watching this closely and will respond accordingly.”
Speaking early Monday, the opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who backed González after she had been banned from running against Maduro, said he had taken about 70% of the votes. Machado called Maduro’s claim of victory fraudulent and called on the armed forces to respect the election’s real results.
“We are going to defend the truth,” said Machado. “Everyone knows what happened. They know what happened and what they are trying to do.”
Independent polling firms had given Venezuelans reasons for hope, even though González is a bookish, 74-year-old former diplomat with few political ambitions. Both Delphos* and ClearPath Strategies had him beating Maduro by more than 25 percentage points ahead of the vote.
Exit polls as the voting neared an end Sunday afternoon showed that González had won by a large margin. Edison Research** and Gallup-Ipsos had González more than doubling Maduro’s vote count. The opposition also has access to a quick count—an actual tabulation of large samples from voting stations and considered highly accurate—that gave González nearly 8.5 million votes, 4.5 million more votes than Maduro.
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The government withdrew an invitation for the European Union to observe the election, instead leaving the onus on a small technical team from the Atlanta-based Carter Center and 90,000 opposition volunteers to monitor and report vote tampering.***
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“None of us can vote because of the restrictions,” Jose David Guerrero, a Venezuelan exile in Colombia. “I’m frustrated because I want to help my country.”***
Maduro does have support in some corners of Venezuela, poor districts where the leftwing ideology of the president’s predecessor is firmly entrenched. And many Venezuelans have been relieved to see the economy make a slight rebound.
“I can’t go against Maduro because he’s the one who has given us stability, the peace that we can’t give up,” said Nestor Pérez, 69, outside of a voting center next to a government housing block. “Everything is going to get better. I’m not only supporting him because he gave me a home but also because of the stability in the country.”****
*Félix Seijas Rodríguez, the director of Delphos, is a member of the opposition. So is Luis Vicente León, the director of Datanalisis.
**The US government funds election observers and exit polls for regime change
***The Washington Post already called the Venezuelan election at 5 a.m. EDT
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