Maduro is defeated | By: Edward Rodriguez

By: Edward Rodriguez

There are three Sundays left for Venezuelans to experience one of the most anticipated days in 25 years, which is why many are keeping a counter to remember the days until July 28, 2024.

The presidential election that will be held in three Sundays in Venezuela is marked by a lack of transparency, balance and international observation, without leaving out the fact that it has not been fair and competitive either.

There is no need to ask: What did Maduro do to be despised by the vast majority of Venezuelans today? The answer is that from the first day he was imposed by Hugo Chavez, he governed in an arrogant manner, he is accused of violating human rights for which he is being investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC); and one of the signs is that there are currently more than 300 political prisoners.

On the other hand, he destroyed the economy, he was unsupportive and he even forgot regarding his own people, so much so that even the Communist Party of Venezuela, which is also responsible for this disaster, abandoned him; he did not build a single hospital, he lived off the excuses of sanctions and all that boring and backward rhetoric of the so-called and failed “Socialism of the 21st Century.”

When we look at the numbers to confirm that Maduro has been defeated, we look at the historical opinion polls and see that in 2013, Nicolás beat Henrique Capriles by 200,000 votes, when it was expected that he would do so in an overwhelming manner, since Hugo Chávez had died a month earlier and his memory was still fresh; then in 2018 he was re-elected in an electoral contest where the true Venezuelan opposition did not participate, so the world was unaware of those results.

In 2020, the pandemic benefited him and he remained in power to this day despite popular discontent.

In 2022, Maduro managed to reach 24% in the evaluation of his management according to the third quarter study by Consultes 21, due to the whole invention of economic recovery that ended in more corruption and in a bubble that did not last long because it exploded in their faces in 2023.

But there is more. Let’s look at these devastating figures from the CNE that reinforce how defeated Maduro is in the face of July 28 and that also show how he pulverized the popular-electoral support that Chávez left him. In 2012, Hugo Chávez won with 8,191,132 votes; in 2013, Maduro was elected president with 7,587,579 votes; in 2018, he was reelected with 6,245,862 votes; in 2020, they obtained 3,722,656 votes in the controversial election of the National Assembly; while in the regional elections of 2021, they obtained 3,595,490 votes, but thanks to the “Great Patriotic Pole.”

With some pressure and calculation, he signed the Barbados Agreement in 2023, and was forced to allow the opposition primary to take place, where María Corina Machado won. After these results, the opposition’s unity remains, the intention to vote among Venezuelans increases, and the hope for change in the country resurges like never before. Maduro miscalculated with this event, which he tried to boycott with opposition leaders.

Starting in 2024 with an election date on the calendar that suits Maduro, the disqualification of the leader María Corina Machado is maintained and then he does the same with her successor Corina Yoris by not allowing her to register, so they end up accepting the former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia, whom Maduro and his advisers believed was a piece of cake and easy to defeat due to his age and high level of ignorance, but once more the calculation was wrong because within a few weeks he was already more popular than Nicolás, and became the representative of change.

Most of the polls, such as Delphos, Consultores 21, Meganalisis, Jesús Seguías, among others, indicate that the difference between the opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia of the Unitary Platform and the Chavismo-Madurismo is over 30%, which is very conservative and is working in the worst case scenario. With these numbers, Maduro is defeated.

This might be translated into a simple calculation: if 12 million voters vote on July 28, Maduro, who has 30%, would obtain 3.6 million votes from the PSUV, public employees and people forced to do so in exchange for “benefits”; while Edmundo González Urrutia would obtain 6 million 720 thousand votes, taking into account that he has 56% of electoral support. This means that Maduro has no chance of coming back, and therefore he is defeated.

The most recent sign that the “Worker President” is defeated was the electoral simulation, where low participation was noted, generating another sign of weakness. Without a doubt, his campaign command and with information from the CNE, which only they have, already know how much they have in mobilized votes, which by the way, do not reach two million.

Change is unstoppable in Venezuela. A bad 25-year cycle marked by poverty and misery will soon come to an end. Venezuelan families remain uncertain as to whether Maduro and his people will accept the results or not. We will know that on July 28th. But for now, what remains is to organize, vote and defend the vote. Maduro is defeated.