Venezuelans were anxiously awaiting the results of Sunday's election. Presidential Election The outcome of the vote, some of which remained open more than three hours after the deadline, could mark the end of 25 years of one-party rule.
Whether President Nicolás Maduro or his main rival, former diplomat Edmundo González, is elected, the elections will have ripple effects across the Americas, either bringing about dramatic political change or extending for another six years the policies that have caused the world's worst peacetime economic collapse. If Maduro is re-elected, opponents and supporters alike have signaled they will join the 7.7 million Venezuelans who have already fled the country in search of opportunity abroad.
Polls opened at 6am but at some polling stations across the country voters lined up much earlier and shared water, coffee and snacks for several hours.
Alejandro Zurbaran lined up at 5pm on Saturday to secure the first seat at his polling station. He said he was standing outside his primary school in the hills outside the capital, Caracas, praying for “the future of the country.”
“We're all here for the change we want to see,” Zurbaran, 74, who works in maintenance, said as other voters nodded in agreement.
Fernando Vergara/AP
About 17 million people are estimated to be eligible to vote in this presidential election. Polls were due to close at 6 p.m., but it was unclear when election officials would announce the first results.
Authorities scheduled Sunday's election to coincide with the 70th birthday of Hugo Chavez, the respected leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013 and entrusted Maduro with the mantle of the Bolivarian Revolution. 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, promoting hunger, sapping the oil industry and separating families through migration.
Maduro, 61, faces an opposition party that has only managed to field one candidate after years of internal party divisions and election boycotts thwarted their ambitions to topple the ruling party.
Gonzalez was elected in April as a last-minute opposition deputy and represents the opposition coalition. Maria Corina MachadoHe has been barred from running for any public office for 15 years by the Supreme Court of Justice, which is controlled by President Maduro.
Machado, a former congressman, won an opposition primary in October with a landslide victory, receiving more than 90% of the vote. After being barred from running for president, she chose a university professor as her replacement, but the National Electoral Commission banned her from registering as well. So Gonzalez, a political newcomer, was chosen.
Fernando Vergara/AP
There are eight candidates challenging Maduro in Sunday's vote, but Gonzalez is the only one who poses a threat to Maduro's power.
Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves and was once Latin America's most advanced economy, but it has plummeted since Maduro came to power. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation of more than 130,000 percent first sparked social unrest and then mass migration.
Former President Donald Trump's administration tried to remove Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection, a move the United States and dozens of other countries condemned as unjust, and the sanctions only deepened the crisis.
Maduro has crisscrossed Venezuela in recent days, inaugurating hospital wards and highways and visiting rural areas he hasn't set foot in for years. His appeal to voters has been one of economic stability, underscored by talk of entrepreneurship, a stable currency and low inflation.
President Maduro said he would recognize the election results and called on all other candidates to publicly declare that they would do the same.
“No one will create chaos in Venezuela,” Maduro said after the vote. “I recognize and will continue to recognize the electoral jury and the official announcements, and I will make sure that they are recognized.”
Commercial activity has increased in the capital, Caracas, since the pandemic and the International Monetary Fund predicts that the economy, which shrank 71% between 2012 and 2020, is expected to grow 4% this year, one of the fastest rates in Latin America.
“They tried to subjugate our people,” Maduro said of the United States at his final rally in Caracas on Thursday. “But today we stand tall and are ready for victory on July 28.”
Cristian Hernandez/AP
But most Venezuelans have not seen their quality of life improve. Many earn less than $200 a month, and families struggle to afford basics; some have to work second or third jobs. The cost of basic food items, enough to feed a family of four for a month, is an estimated $385.
Judith Cantilla, 52, said she voted because she wanted change. Voting in the working-class Petare neighborhood in eastern Caracas, she said people were tired of the current system.
“For me, change in Venezuela means there are jobs, there is safety, there are medicines in the hospitals, teachers and doctors are paid well,” she said.
Meanwhile, Liana Ibarra, a manicurist in the Caracas metropolitan area, stood in line at 3 a.m. on Sunday carrying a backpack packed with water, coffee and cassava snacks, finding at least 150 people ahead of her.
“There used to be a lot of apathy towards elections, but that's not the case anymore,” Ibarra said.
She said if Gonzalez loses, she plans to ask a relative living in the U.S. to sponsor her and her son for legal immigration.
“I can't take it anymore,” she said.
The opposition has sought to exploit the vast inequalities that have resulted from a crisis that has seen Venezuelans abandon their national currency, the bolivar, for the U.S. dollar.
Messrs. Gonzalez and Machado focused their campaigns on Venezuela's vast interior, which has not seen the economic boom seen in Caracas in recent years, and promised a government that would create enough jobs to allow Venezuelans abroad to return and reunite with their families.
Matthias Delacroix/AP
About a quarter of Venezuelans would consider leaving the country if Maduro wins Sunday, according to an April poll by Caracas-based Delfos, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Most of the Venezuelans who have emigrated in the past 11 years have settled in Latin America and the Caribbean, but in recent years many have begun to turn their attention to the United States.
The two campaigns stand out not only for the political movements they represent but also for how they have addressed the hopes and fears of voters.
Maduro's rallies have featured lively electronic meringue dancing and speeches attacking his opponents. But he faltered after leftist allies, including Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, criticized him for warning of a “bloodbath” if he lost. Maduro's son told the Spanish newspaper El Pais that he would hand over the presidency peacefully if the ruling party was defeated, a rare admission of vulnerability that is at odds with the triumphalist tone of Maduro's campaign.
By contrast, at the rallies for Gonzalez and Machado, people cried and chanted “Freedom! Freedom!” as they passed by. People handed rosaries to devout Catholics, walked along highways and passed military checkpoints to reach their rallies. Some made video calls to relatives who had emigrated to catch a glimpse of the candidates.
At a rally in mid-May, Gonzalez, 74, asked supporters to imagine “a country where our airports and borders are filled with children being returned home.”
