Caracas, Venezuela — Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election on Sunday, even as his opponents prepared to contest the results, setting the stage for a high-stakes showdown that will determine whether the South American nation moves away from one-party rule.
Shortly after midnight, the National Electoral Council announced that Maduro had won 51% of the vote, ahead of opposition candidate Edmundo González, who won 44%. The council said the results were based on a count of 80% of polling stations, marking an irreversible trend.
But the electoral authority, controlled by Maduro loyalists, did not immediately release official tallies from each of the country’s 15,797 polling stations, hampering the opposition’s ability to challenge the results after claiming it only had ballot records for 30% of the ballot boxes.
Fernando Vergara / AP
The delay in announcing the results – six hours after polls were scheduled to close – indicates a deep debate within the government over how to proceed after Maduro’s opponents came out early in the evening all but claiming victory.
Opposition officials said results collected from campaign representatives at polling stations showed Gonzalez had beaten Maduro.
Foreign leaders have delayed recognizing the results, with the electoral council promising to release official results in the “coming hours.”
“The Maduro regime must understand that the results it has published are difficult to believe,” said Gabriel Boric, the leader of the Chilean left. “We will not recognize any result that is not verifiable.”
In a statement released just before the electoral council announced the result, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called on Monday for votes in Venezuela’s presidential election to be counted “fairly and transparently.”
“Now that voting is over, it is vitally important that every vote is counted fairly and transparently,” Blinken said. “We call on election authorities to release the detailed vote count (‘actas’) to ensure transparency and accountability.”
Maduro said after midnight on Monday that his victory was a triumph of peace and stability and reiterated his campaign assertion that Venezuela’s electoral system is transparent, according to Reuters news agency.
Maduro, seeking a third term, faced his biggest challenge yet from the most unlikely opponent, Gonzalez: a retired diplomat who was unknown to voters before being tapped in April as a last-minute replacement for powerful opponent Maria Corina Machado.
Opposition leaders were already celebrating, online and outside some polling stations, what they said was a landslide victory for González.
“I’m so happy,” said Merling Fernández, a 31-year-old bank worker, as an opposition representative left a polling station in a working-class Caracas neighborhood to announce results showing González had more than doubled Maduro’s vote. Dozens of people gathered nearby to perform an impromptu rendition of the national anthem.
“This is the path to a new Venezuela,” Fernández added, holding back tears. “We are all tired of this yoke.”
US Vice President Kamala Harris had previously expressed her support for Venezuela. “The United States stands with the Venezuelan people who cast their votes in today’s historic presidential election,” Harris wrote on the social network X. “The will of the Venezuelan people must be respected.”
Voters began lining up at some polling stations across the country before dawn on Sunday, sharing water, coffee and snacks for several hours.
The election will have repercussions across the Americas, with opponents and supporters of the government signaling their interest in joining the exodus of 7.7 million Venezuelans who have already left their homes for opportunities abroad if Maduro wins another six-year term.
Authorities decided Sunday’s election would coincide with the 70th birthday of former President Hugo Chavez, the revered leftist who died of cancer in 2013, leaving the Bolivarian Revolution in Maduro’s hands. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela are more unpopular than ever with many voters who accuse his policies of driving down wages, increasing hunger, crippling the oil industry and separating families because of immigration.
The opposition has managed to rally around a single candidate after years of party divisions and election boycotts that torpedoed its ambitions to topple the ruling party.
For 15 years, the Supreme Court, controlled by Maduro, barred Machado from running for any office. A former congresswoman, she won the opposition’s October primary 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 barred her from registering as well. That’s when González, a political newcomer, was chosen.
Sunday’s vote also saw eight other candidates challenge Maduro, but only González threatens Maduro’s rule.
After voting, Maduro said he would recognize the election result and urged all other candidates to publicly declare that they would do the same.
“Nobody is going to create chaos in Venezuela,” Maduro said. “I recognize and I will recognize the electoral arbiter, the official announcements and I will make sure that they are recognized.”
Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves and was once Latin America’s most advanced economy. But it went into freefall after Maduro came to power. Plunging oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that topped 130,000% led first to social unrest and then to mass emigration.
Economic sanctions imposed by the United States to force Maduro from power after his 2018 re-election – which the United States and dozens of other countries condemned as illegitimate – have only deepened the crisis.
In this election, Maduro has presented voters with economic security, which he has tried to sell with stories of entrepreneurship and references to a stable exchange rate and lower inflation. The International Monetary Fund projects that the economy will grow 4% this year — one of the fastest in Latin America — after shrinking 71% between 2012 and 2020.
But most Venezuelans have not seen their quality of life improve. Many earn less than $200 a month, meaning families struggle to afford basic necessities. Some work second or third jobs. A basket of basic necessities, enough to feed a family of four for a month, costs about $385.
The opposition has tried to take advantage of the enormous inequalities born of the crisis, during which Venezuelans abandoned their country’s currency, the bolivar, for the US dollar.
González and Machado have focused much of their campaign on Venezuela’s vast hinterland, where the economic activity seen in Caracas in recent years has failed to materialize. They have promised a government that would create enough jobs to entice Venezuelans living abroad to return home and reunite with their families.
