President Nicolás Maduro has been declared the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election, according to partial results announced by the National Electoral Council (CNE).
Elvis Amoroso, the head of the CNE and a close ally of Maduro, stated that with 80% of the ballots counted, Maduro had secured 51.20% of the vote, while his main rival received 44.02%.
The Venezuelan opposition has rejected the CNE’s announcement as fraudulent and vowed to challenge the results. They claimed that their candidate, Edmundo González, had actually won with 70% of the votes and insisted he is the rightful president-elect.
According to the opposition, their vote tallies, exit polls, and quick counts showed that González had a lead of 40 percentage points over Maduro.
Opposition parties had united behind González in an effort to unseat President Maduro, who has been in power for 11 years. Pre-election opinion polls suggested that González would decisively defeat Maduro.
Many voters expressed a desire for change after 25 years of socialist PSUV party rule, first under the late President Hugo Chávez and then under Maduro following Chávez’s death in 2013.
Despite fears of potential government fraud, the opposition had hoped their significant lead would prevent the Maduro administration from manipulating the election outcome.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken voiced his scepticism following the CNE’s announcement, stating that the US had “serious concerns that the declared outcome does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people.”
The Chilean president, Gabriel Boric, also said he found the result “hard to believe”.
Mr Boric demanded “total transparency of the minutes and the process, and that international observers not committed to the government account for the veracity of the results”.
Uruguay’s president said of the Maduro government: “They were going to ‘win’ regardless of the actual results.”
Meanwhile, allies of Mr Maduro were quick to congratulate him.
The Cuban president said “the dignity and bravery of the Venezuelan people had triumphed over pressure and manipulation”.
Mr Maduro described the result as “a triumph of peace and stability” to cheering supporters in Caracas.
He praised the Venezuelan election system, describing it as transparent, and mocked the opposition, which he said “cries fraud” at every election.
The opposition had deployed thousands of witnesses to polling stations across the country to be able to announce its own vote count.
However, a spokeswoman for the coalition led by Mr González said that their witnesses had been “forced to leave” many polling stations.
This isn’t the first time election results in Venezuela have been contested. Maduro’s 2018 victory was also widely condemned as neither free nor fair.
Concerns about irregularities in this election were heightened by President Maduro’s assertion that he would win “by hook or by crook.”
Voting in Venezuela is conducted electronically, with voters selecting their preferred candidate on a machine that sends results to the CNE headquarters.
The machine also prints a paper receipt, which is placed in a ballot box.
By law, parties can send witnesses to verify these paper receipts at each polling station, but many were prevented from doing so.
The opposition had planned to compare these paper tallies with the electronic results announced by the CNE, but by late Sunday, they reported having access to less than a third of the printed receipts.