Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro claimed victory in the country’s presidential elections in the early hours of Monday morning, despite exit polls that indicated a win for the opposition. International leaders have questioned the results and called for a careful, transparent vote count.

A win for Maduro gives him a third consecutive six-year term as president. With 80% of the vote counted, the National Electoral Council announced that he was the winner with 51.2% of the vote.

“Fascism in Venezuela will never win, not now nor ever,” Maduro told his supporters after the official announcement. “They couldn’t overcome us with the sanctions, or the threats. They will never overcome the dignity of the Venezuelan people,” he said, thanking late president Hugo Chávez for the win.

Maduro also denied accusations of fraud. “In Venezuela there is a constitution and there are institutions. There is a trust-worthy electoral system,” he said.

The National Electoral Council announced the results once they considered them to be irreversible, with 80% of the vote counted. Around 59% of eligible voters participated — in 2018, only 46% had voted.

According to the Council’s figures, the main opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, got 44.2% of the vote. González wasn’t originally going to be a candidate: he replaced right-wing politician and industrial engineer María Corina Machado, who had won her party’s primaries in October 2023. 

However, the Supreme Court upheld a ban on Machado participating in the presidential elections due to her alleged involvement in a plot to get the United States to impose economic sanctions on Venezuela and her support for a military invasion in the country.

“We won, and everyone knows it,” Machado told the press after the official results announcement. According to the electoral tallies her coalition received from the electoral council, the opposition leader said, González got 70% of the votes and is “the new president elect.”

On X, Chilean President Gabriel Boric posted: “The Maduro regime has to understand that the results it’s publishing are hard to believe.” He called for transparency and said that Chile would not endorse any results that could not be verified. 

The foreign ministries of Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay have called for a “transparent vote count” that would ensure voters’ will is respected and “allow for verification and control from auditors and delegates from every candidate.”

Photo: Venezuelan diaspora in Buenos Aires supporting opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez waits the results outside the polling station as part of the election day for the presidential elections in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sunday, July 28, 2024. By: Anita Pouchard Serra