Maduro blocked the opposition’s chosen candidate, arrested campaign workers and blocked access to state media. Still, the opposition says it can win — by a landslide.
But in a country where the electoral council, the courts and military is controlled by Maduro, the outcome remains far from certain. He and his team remain confident they can win, according to people familiar with the government conversations. If he loses at the polls, he is not expected to cede power voluntarily.
“The key word to define the Venezuelan election is uncertainty,” said researcher Luis Vicente León.
The opposition is betting that it can attract voters to a victory so overwhelming that Maduro will be forced to accept the results and begin negotiating his exit. The United States can play a critical role by offering legal incentives and sanctions relief to give Maduro a way out that doesn’t lead him straight to prison.
The United States is ready to “consider steps that facilitate a peaceful transition of power,” a senior Biden administration official said Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with government rules.
A Maduro defeat would be a significant foreign policy victory for the Biden administration. U.S. officials negotiated a deal last year in which Maduro promised to hold a competitive election in exchange for some sanctions relief. With irregular immigration at the center of the U.S. presidential campaign, success in Venezuela could boost Vice President Harris’s candidacy against former President Donald Trump.
Venezuela’s opposition candidate, former diplomat Edmundo González, was unknown to most Venezuelans just a few months ago. Now, polls predict he could defeat Maduro by double digits. He is a replacement for longtime Maduro critic Maria Corina Machado, the “Iron Lady” who draws tens of thousands of Venezuelans to her quasi-messianic campaign caravans — and was disqualified from Maduro’s Supreme Court race.
Her campaign focuses on a simple message: vote for us and your loved ones can come home.
“The central theme is family, it’s the feeling that this may be the last opportunity to reunite our families,” Machado told The Washington Post. “This is not just an election campaign. This is a movement for redemption, for liberation.”
The run-up to the election has been far from free and fair. European Union observers who had planned to monitor the vote have been disinvited, leaving only small teams from the Atlanta-based Carter Center, a panel of U.N. experts and a grassroots group of thousands of ordinary Venezuelans who are training to observe polling stations.
Machado issued a call to action last week: Vote early, stay close to the polls and alert the opposition to any suspicious activity. “We will all become citizen reporters,” she said.
Venezuelan Davis Salazar, a retired firefighter who lives in Canada, returned home to vote.
“The people have woken up. They have been robbing and destroying people for 25 years,” said Salazar, 65. “If the people want change, they need to go out and vote. Otherwise, we will continue with the same thing.”
Venezuelans are watching the military and how it responds to any attempt to manipulate the election.
Leopoldo López, an opposition leader, said the military should consider its own interests, “its own stability, its own future.”
“Today, with Edmundo, a transition can be a better source of stability,” he said, “instead of Maduro telling them to go out and kill, to repress, to impose the state.”
Maduro warned of a “bloodbath” if he lost.
“The fate of Venezuela depends on our victory,” he told rallygoers this month. “If we want to avoid a bloodbath or a fratricidal civil war unleashed by the fascists, then we must secure the greatest electoral victory of all time.”
Maduro’s defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, said last week that he would uphold the law. He asked that “the one who won take charge of his government project and that the one who lost rest. That’s all.”
