ezjili Election Results Presented by Venezuela’s Opposition Suggest Maduro Lost Decisively
Venezuela’s electoral body announced on Monday that the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, comfortably won another six years in office, beating his main opponent by seven percentage points in a vote that was marred by widespread irregularities.
But partial election results, provided to The New York Times by a group of researchers associated with Venezuela’s main opposition alliance, supply new evidence that calls the official result into question.
Their figures suggest that an opposition candidate, a retired diplomat named Edmundo González, actually beat Mr. Maduro by more than 30 percentage points. The researchers’ estimate of the result — 66 percent to 31 percent — is similar to the result obtained by an independent exit poll conducted on Election Day across the country.
It was not possible for The Times to independently verify the underlying tallies, which the researchers say were collected from paper receipts produced by about 1,000 voting machines, about three percent of the country’s total. By Wednesday, Venezuela’s government-controlled election authority had still not released detailed results, despite growing international pressure.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTBut several independent survey and election analysts reviewed the researchers’ approach and said that, based on the tallies shared by the researchers, the estimates appeared credible. And given the partial tallies, The Times was able to broadly replicate the researchers’ estimates of the result within two percentage points.
The announcement of Mr. Maduro’s victory triggered deadly protests on Monday and led several Latin American countries to suspend or downgrade diplomatic relations with Venezuela, plunging the polarized country into a new period of flux.
Vote Estimates Closely Tracked the Final Result — Until This Year
Estimated Vote Share of Maduro’s Party
EST. FROM
SAMPLE DATA
NATIONAL
RESULT
ELECTION
DIFFERENCE
<1 pt.
2015
38%
39%
<1 pt.
2018
66%
67%
2 pts.
2021
44%
45%
21 pts.
2024
30%
51%
Estimated Vote Share of Maduro’s Party
ESTIMATE FROM
SAMPLE DATA
NATIONAL
RESULT
ELECTION
DIFFERENCE
<1 pt.
2015
38%
39%
<1 pt.
2018
66%
67%
2 pts.
2021
44%
45%
2024
30%
51%
21 pts.
Source: Times analysis of sample data and historical election results provided by AltaVista.
Note: National result refers to the share of votes Maduro’s party obtained in the 2015 legislative election; 2018 presidential election; 2021 governors and state lawmakers election; and the stated share of votes he received in the 2024 presidential election.ezjili