Elections in Venezuela, a survey shows President Maduro clearly disadvantaged.

Translated by Irene Cecchi

Bad news for the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. A survey carried out by the Meganalisis institute three months before the next general elections, that will take place on July 28th, shows that the chavist leader may not renew his mandate. It’s possible that his place will be taken by Edmundo González Urrutia, the candidate for the opposition coalition Unidad Venezuela.

The survey’s results

The survey, carried out between April 25th and 28th, involved 1009 people of age who live in different parts of Venezuela. The participants were asked questions about the presidential elections due on July 28th. Answering about their voting intentions, these were the results: Edmundo González Urrutia (32,4 percent), Nicolás Maduro (11,2 percent), Benjamin Rauseo (1,1 percent), Antonio Escarri (0,9 percent), others (2 percent); the 33,1% still didn’t know who to vote and almost 19.3% abstained.

If it really will go this way, it would be a landslide victory for the opposition candidate. But who is González Urrutia? According to 46.8% of the interviewed, he is almost unknown, in fact, only half of the participants affirmed knowing the candidate. So, how is it possible for him to have such a high approval rate? Let’s take a step back.

During the last few years, at the head of the main opposition party, Vente Venezuela, there was María Corina Machado, a liberal who seems to be out of the game this year. In 2021, a sentence of the Supreme Court of Justice, controlled by the President himself, proclaimed her candidacy impossible for 15 years due to her alleged participation in a coup. This is why Machado proposed Urrutia to take her place fighting Maduro. According to the survey, the element that made the difference when deciding who to vote for is the trust that Machado has in him: in fact, 76.2% of those who will vote for him are doing it to observe what their leader asked.

It appears that the charm of the Vente Venezuela leader still plays a fundamental role in people’s opinion when it comes to deciding who to vote for. As a matter of fact, the same survey shows that, if it was possible to vote for her, she would have reached 75% of votes, leaving Maduro with a meager 9%.

Adiós Maduro?

If these projections are true, Maduro won’t gain his third mandate leading the country. President since 2013, the leader of Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (psuv) in these twelve years continued with the policies of his predecessor Hugo Chávez, an authoritarian statesman. Following a centralizing ideology, Maduro weakened the democratic institutions in the Country and restricted the freedom of action for the opposition. In the last few years, politicians, journalists and activists have suffered numerous episodes of repression.

This suppression of republican liberties was contested by the United States in 2019. Under the Trump administration, the US imposed an embargo against Venezuela on natural gas and oil export to international markets. Because of these sanctions, the economy of the Country, that was already in a declining situation due to the bad management of the public administration, suffered another breakdown: according to 2022 data, the inflation reached 234% and the families with an income below the poverty represented 81% of the population.

Licence expired

Last fall, Presidente Joe Biden eliminated these measures against the exports of Venezuelan gas and oil. Some analysts interpreted this choice under two different points of view: on one hand, the need to face the rise of the oil price worldwide, on the other, containing the migration flows from Venezuela to the US borders. The agreed trade opening was supposed to last six months in exchange for a commitment on Maduro’s part to reestablish democracy in his Country. This licence expired on April 17th and it wasn’t renewed considering the exclusion of Machado from the next elections and the general authoritarian path that the chavist leader is still carrying on.

The spokesperson for the United States Department of State, Matthew Miller, Explained in an official statement why the sanctions were reintroduced and then made a call to the Caracas government: «We are asking Maduro to allow all candidates to take part in the elections and to free all political prisoners». Shortly before Washington took this decision, the Minister of Popular Power for Petroleum and President of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), Pedro Tellechea, stated: «With or without American sanctions, the Venezuelan oil industry will not stop».

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