9 June 2024
ORINOCO TRIBUNE
As the Venezuelan Presidential election date approaches, the right wing is still unable to produce a unified strategy or narrative. This is evidenced by infighting and internal criticisms amongst those sympathetic to the right.
The head of the Venezuelan polling firm Datanálisis, anti-Chavista political analyst and opposition sympathizer Luis Vicente León criticized the far-right opposition coalition Unitary Platform’s “triumphalist” narrative for “creating more problems than successes” just weeks before the July 28 presidential elections.
In a post on his X account, published on Wednesday, June 5, Luis Vicente León commented that “it is not true that the result of the July 28 election is already clear and defined and that there is no room for surprises.”
He pointed out that “this is not just an election between two candidates unbalanced in terms of the people’s preferences in favor of the opposition.”
According to León, the results of the elections will depend on several factors, among which the most important are the number of votes the various candidates can attract and the level of abstentionism.
With respect to the distribution of votes among the candidates, León considers that it will depend on “the number of effective votes that [Unitary Platform candidate] Edmundo González Urrutia is able to mobilize, which is fundamentally based on the endorsement of María Corina Machado and the spontaneous mobilization provoked by the majority of the Venezuelan population’s desire for change; the effective votes that [PSUV candidate] Nicolás Maduro manages to mobilize, using the machinery of his party and the entire national government, with resources infinitely greater than those of his adversaries and his capacity to stimulate and/or pressure Chavista voters and beneficiaries [of government schemes] to vote; and the votes that the other opposition candidates are able to capture, which, added together, constitute a significant slice of the total opposition vote.”
Abstention will also play a significant role in the electoral results, León wrote, as “four million people (20% of the registered voters) will not be able to vote because they are out of the country.” In addition, there will be another percentage of the electorate who will “not show up to vote, irrespective of their political preference.”
In his opinion, electoral abstentionism is “an uncertain variable,” because it is difficult to project participation based on opinion polls, given that “there is a gap between the manifest disposition [to vote] and the fact of voting, which depends on the ease of movement (spontaneous or induced), motivation and hope about the result, the voters’ commitment to their preferred candidate, the confidence in the electoral system and the results, the security situation, the pressure of the environment, among other factors.”
The projection of participation for the July 28 elections, as analyzed in different surveys, varies over a wide range, with the most “optimistic” projections predicting 80% participation by voters who will be present in Venezuela on the election day, amounting to some 13.5 million votes (total abstention rate of 36% of the electorate). On the other hand, the more realistic projections forecast around 65% participation by the voters present in the country, which translates to 11 million voters, with abstention rate of 48% of the electoral registry. According to Luis Vicente León, “the highest abstention is undoubtedly concentrated in the opposition segment.” Therefore, a higher turnout would be likely to provide some electoral advantage to the opposition, while a “higher abstention… would open the door to a Chavista triumph.”
In addition to all this, the Datanálisis chief, true to his right-wing sentiments, upheld the oft repeated rhetoric of the opposition and the US government, that President Maduro has an “advantage” even before the elections take place because he “controls the institutions.” “I do not think it is worth discussing this topic too much,” wrote León, “since the advantage of controlling the electoral institutions, the definition of the electoral registry, the number of voting centers and their structure, the guaranteed presence of witnesses in all the centers of the country, the ability to keep the centers open until it is convenient for them, among many other factors, undoubtedly have a fundamental value in terms of the result. For some, these may be issues that they prefer not to think about.”
In recent days, various other opposition sympathizer figures have called out the Unitary Platform’s “triumphalist” narratives. One of them is journalist Celina Carquez, who also criticized the far right’s lack of an adequate organizational machinery and its inability to ensure even the presence of witnesses at all voting tables. She said that only 67% of the voting tables throughout the country will have one witness from the Unitary Platform, while less than 35% will have two witnesses from the bloc.
She further highlighted the opposition electoral personnel’s lack of training. “Elections are not won with rallies and marches. Elections are won at the polling stations,” she commented. “In a surprise visit made by Maduro, together with the president of the National Assembly, he made it clear that PSUV witnesses are not going to leave the voting centers until they win. We are talking about a government with a well-oiled electoral machinery, with an electoral intelligence and an almost infallible system. And less than two months before the elections, you [the opposition] do not have enough witnesses, and those you have are not trained.”
Francisco Bello, president of the pollster Pronóstico, expressed similar sentiments, pointing out that the opposition is not considering properly the reality of the electoral situation of Venezuela.
In this scenario, it is becoming increasingly likely that the far-right opposition may not accept the election results if President Maduro wins and may claim electoral fraud, with support from the US government, something that has already happened in Venezuela many times in the past two decades.
Special for Orinoco Tribune by Saheli Chowdhury
Saheli Chowdhury is from West Bengal, India, studying physics for a profession, but with a passion for writing. She is interested in history and popular movements around the world, especially in the Global South. She is a contributor and works for Orinoco Tribune.
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