A Venezuelan living in Brasilia, Brazil, with his face painted in the colors of his country’s flag, gathers with other Venezuelans on the day of their country’s presidential election, Sunday, July 28, 2024.
Eraldo Peres/AP
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Eraldo Peres/AP
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelans are eagerly awaiting the results of Sunday’s presidential election that could pave the way for the end of 25 years of one-party rule, even as some polling stations remained open more than three hours after the deadline.
President Nicolás Maduro, seeking a third term, faced his toughest challenge yet from an unlikely opponent: Edmundo González, a retired diplomat who was unknown to voters before he was chosen in April as a last-minute replacement for powerful opposition figure Maria Corina Machado.
Opposition leaders celebrated, online and outside some polling stations, what they said was a landslide victory for González. Their hopes were fueled by exit polls that showed a large margin of victory for González. Exit polls are not allowed under Venezuelan law.
“I am so happy,” said Merling Fernández, a 31-year-old banker, as an opposition campaign representative emerged from a polling center in a working-class neighborhood of Caracas to announce results showing González had doubled Maduro’s vote. Dozens of people standing nearby erupted in an impromptu rendition of the national anthem.
“This is the path to a new Venezuela,” Fernández added, fighting back tears. “We are tired of this yoke.”
However, Maduro’s supporters show no signs of surrendering.
“We cannot show results, but we can show faces,” Jorge Rodriguez, Maduro’s campaign chairman, smiled at a news conference.
Polling stations were supposed to close at 6 p.m., but more than three hours after the deadline, some polling centers in Caracas remained open and authorities remained silent. The opposition called on the National Electoral Council to begin counting votes.
“This is a decisive moment,” Machado, standing next to González, told reporters at their campaign headquarters.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado hugs supporters after voting in the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela, Sunday, July 28, 2024.
Matias Delacroix/AP
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Matias Delacroix/AP
Machado was careful not to declare victory before the government released the results but said she had received copies of some official vote counts and they showed record turnout — exactly what the opposition needed to defeat Maduro’s well-oiled electoral machine.
González was equally enthusiastic, congratulating the Venezuelan people on this “historic” day and calling on supporters to “celebrate in peace”.
Earlier, US Vice President Kamala Harris expressed her support. “The United States stands with the people of Venezuela, who made their voices heard in today’s historic presidential election,” Harris wrote on X. “The will of the Venezuelan people must be respected.”
Some of Maduro’s allies also expressed confidence.
“The ballot boxes represent what the streets have been saying for months,” Maduro’s son, lawmaker Nicolas Maduro Guerra, said on X as darkness fell over the capital. “Victory for the Venezuelan people.”
But with no order to close polling stations, their optimism was in vain.
Voters began lining up at some polling centers across the country before dawn Sunday, sharing water, coffee and snacks for hours.
The election will have ripple effects across the Americas, with both government supporters and opponents expressing interest in joining the exodus of 7.7 million Venezuelans who have left their homeland in search of opportunities abroad if Maduro wins another six-year term.
The government scheduled Sunday’s election to coincide with the 70th birthday of former President Hugo Chávez, a revered leftist who died of cancer in 2013, leaving his Bolivarian Revolution in Maduro’s hands. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for driving down wages, fueling hunger, crippling the oil industry and separating families through migration.
Maduro, 61, is facing an opposition that has managed to back a single candidate after years of internal divisions and election boycotts, dashing their ambitions to overthrow the ruling party.
Machado has been barred from running for office for 15 years by the Maduro-controlled Supreme Court. A former lawmaker, she won the opposition primary in October with more than 90 percent of the vote. After being barred from running for president, she chose a university professor as her replacement on the ballot, but the National Electoral Council also barred her from registering. That’s when González, a political newcomer, was chosen.
Sunday’s vote also featured eight other candidates challenging Maduro, but only González posed a threat to Maduro’s hold on power.
After the vote, Maduro said he would recognize the election results and called on all other candidates to publicly declare that they would do the same.
“Nobody can create chaos in Venezuela,” Maduro said. “I recognize and will recognize the electoral referees, the official announcements and I will make sure they are recognized.”
Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves and once boasted Latin America’s most advanced economy. But the country has been in freefall since Maduro took power. Plunging oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that soared to more than 130,000% have led to social unrest and then mass migration.
Economic sanctions from the United States aimed at forcing Maduro from power after his re-election in 2018 — an election the United States and dozens of other countries condemned as illegitimate — have only worsened the crisis.
Maduro’s pitch to voters in this election has been about economic security, which he has tried to sell with tales of entrepreneurship and references to a stable exchange rate and lower inflation. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the economy will grow 4% this year—one of the fastest in Latin America—after shrinking 71% from 2012 to 2020.
But most Venezuelans have seen no improvement in their quality of life. Many earn less than $200 a month, meaning families struggle to afford basic goods. Some work second and third jobs. A basket of basic goods—enough to feed a family of four for a month—costs an estimated $385.
Judith Cantilla, 52, voted to change those conditions.
“For me, change in Venezuela is having jobs, having security, having medicine in hospitals, good salaries for teachers and doctors,” she said as she voted in the working-class Petare neighborhood of Caracas.
Elsewhere, Liana Ibarra, a manicurist in Caracas, lined up at 3 a.m. Sunday with a backpack filled with water, coffee and cassava snacks and found at least 150 people ahead of her.
“Before, people were very apathetic about elections, but not anymore,” Ibarra said.
She said if González loses, she will ask relatives living in the United States to sponsor her and her son to apply to immigrate legally there. “We can’t take it anymore,” she said.
The opposition has tried to exploit the huge inequality that has arisen from the crisis, as Venezuelans have abandoned their national currency, the bolivar, in favor of the US dollar.
González and Machado focused much of their campaign on Venezuela’s vast, remote interior, where the economic activity seen in Caracas in recent years has failed to materialize. They promised a government that would create enough jobs to entice Venezuelans living abroad to return home and reunite with their families.
After voting at a polling station near a church in an upscale Caracas neighborhood, González called on the country’s armed forces to respect “the people’s decision”.
“What we see today are streams of joy and hope,” González, 74, told reporters. “We will change hatred with love. We will change poverty with progress. We will change corruption with honesty. We will change goodbye with reunion.”
An April poll by Caracas-based Delphos found that about a quarter of Venezuelans were thinking about emigrating if Maduro wins Sunday’s election. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Most Venezuelans who have migrated over the past 11 years have settled in Latin America and the Caribbean. In recent years, many have begun heading to the United States.
Both campaigns stand out not only because of the political movements they represent but also because of the way they address voters’ hopes and fears.
Maduro’s rallies featured energetic electronic merengue dancing and speeches attacking his opponents. But after he was criticized by leftist allies like Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for his comments about a “bloodbath” if he lost, Maduro backed down. His son told the Spanish newspaper El Pais that the ruling party would peacefully hand over the presidency if he lost—a rare admission of weakness that was out of step with the triumphalist tone of Maduro’s campaign.
In contrast, González and Machado’s rallies had people crying and chanting “Freedom! Freedom!” as the duo passed by. People handed rosaries to devout Catholics, walked along highways and passed through military checkpoints to get to their events. Others video-called relatives who had emigrated so they could catch a glimpse of the candidates.
“We don’t want any more Venezuelans to leave, and to those who have left, I want to say that we will do everything we can to bring them back here, and we will welcome them with open arms,” González said Sunday.
Associated Press journalist Fabiola Sánchez contributed to this report.
