On Sunday, voters in the South American nation of Venezuela will take part in what may be one of the most consequential elections in the country’s modern history.
After 11 years in power, President Nicolas Maduro is facing steep odds as he seeks a third term against opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.
Polls show Maduro trailing Gonzalez by nearly 40 points, as voters express exhaustion over Venezuela’s economic crisis and political repression.
But critics question whether Maduro will accept defeat if he is indeed trounced at the polls. The socialist leader has been accused of wielding his power to suppress potential rivals, arresting some and barring others from holding office.
Who are the candidates, what developments have we seen so far, and under what circumstances will voting take place? We answer these questions and more in this brief explainer.
When is the election taking place?
The election will take place on July 28, the birthday of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Maduro’s mentor.
What do the pre-election polls show?
Maduro appears to be lagging behind his rival Gonzalez by a seemingly insurmountable margin.
The polling firm ORC Consultores shows Maduro with 12.5 percent support, compared with a whopping 59.6 percent for Gonzalez.
Another poll from the data firm Delphos and Andres Bello Catholic University showed Maduro with a slightly higher approval rating, about 25 percent. But he was again far behind Gonzalez, who pulled in more than 59 percent support in that poll as well.
Why is Maduro so unpopular?
Maduro has long struggled to muster the popularity of his predecessor, Chavez.
Since the mid-2010s, Venezuela’s economy has been in dire straits, as the price of its main export, oil, cratered.
The economic crisis triggered hyperinflation and severe economic strain. An exodus of people started to leave the country in search of opportunities elsewhere. Some critics blamed Maduro and his allies for corruption and economic mismanagement as well.
Sanctions imposed by the United States — in response to alleged human rights abuses and democratic backsliding — have compounded the economic crisis, according to experts.
Laura Dib, the Venezuela programme director at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a research and rights advocacy group based in the US, told Al Jazeera that people in the country are desperate for an improvement to the crushing economic circumstances.
“The minimum wage in Venezuela can be around $130 per month, but what a family needs just to cover their basic needs is around $500,” she said.
How many people have left the country?
Perhaps the best indicator of how dire the economic situation has become is the number of people leaving the country.
According to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), more than 7.7 million have left the country since 2014, in one of the largest instances of mass displacement in modern history. About 2,000 people continue to leave each day.
Some experts fear that number may spike if Maduro claims victory in a third successive election.
Who is running?
Maduro, the 61-year-old successor of former President Chavez, is seeking a third six-year term as the candidate for the United Socialist Party.
He seeks to continue Chavez’s legacy of offering social programmes to the poor and taking an antagonistic stance towards the US.
Facing off against Maduro is a group of opposition parties that call themselves the Unitary Platform coalition.
The coalition brings together an array of political views, but its defining goal is to bring Maduro’s time in power to a close and improve relations with the West. By winning sanctions relief and boosting investments, officials in the Unitary Platform hope to improve conditions in Venezuela, allowing members of the diaspora to return home.
The opposition is represented on the ballot by Gonzalez, a 74-year-old former diplomat.
For his part, Maduro has painted the opposition as stooges of foreign powers who would privatise the social programmes that many poor residents rely on for economic support.
What happened last time Maduro ran?
The opposition largely sat out the 2018 election in protest of what it said was a biased electoral system. Maduro ultimately won that election with more than 67 percent of the votes.
But groups like the Organization of American States warned that the election failed to meet the standards for a “free, fair, transparent and democratic process”, and observers noted that voter turnout was at a record low.
Has this year’s election process been fair?
In short, no.
While the opposition is running with Gonzalez at the top of the ticket, he was not the coalition’s first choice to take the lead.
In fact, he wasn’t even the second choice. Gonzalez was selected only after the government barred the popular opposition figure Maria Corina Machado from competing in the election, as well as Corina Yoris, who was initially named as her replacement.
Other opposition figures have been detained in the lead-up to the vote, on what critics consider sham charges.
In January, Venezuela’s Supreme Court upheld a decision to bar Machado from holding public office for 15 years.
How does the government defend those actions?
The government has defended its decision by alleging that opposition figures like Machado were involved in efforts to overthrow Maduro and encouraged US sanctions against Venezuela.
While Machado remains widely popular, those charges lean into anxiety over a history of US support for efforts to undermine the government in Caracas and install a new one more favourable towards Washington.
Maduro and his allies have also accused Machado of being corrupt.
How ‘free’ are Venezuela’s elections?
Machado’s ban from political office drew widespread condemnation, particularly after she won last October’s opposition primary in a landslide.
Since Maduro came to power, faith in the legitimacy of elections has dropped steeply, with just 26 percent of voters saying they were confident in the honesty of elections in 2023, down from 59 percent in 2012.
Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin America studies at the US-based Council on Foreign Relations, said that Venezuela can be classified as “competitively authoritarian”, with elections taking place under severely constrained circumstances.
“This is not considered a fair election at all, but it’s also not Nicaragua,” he said, referring to the government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, which has led a harsh crackdown on opposition figures and dissidents.
“Although it’s true that Maria Corina Machado, the winner of the primary, was arbitrarily banned from running, that the replacement her party chose was banned, there are still other opposition candidates,” Freeman added. “So it’s partially free but quite unfair.”
Will Maduro step down if he loses?
While the opposition has reason to be optimistic about its chances, there is deep anxiety about what could happen if Maduro faces defeat.
Many fear Maduro could simply declare victory or take even more drastic steps to hold onto power. Maduro himself told a rally on July 17 that there could be a “civil war” if he does not secure a victory.
“Regardless of whether there is a transition to Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, some type of crackdown within the Maduro government, or if Maduro holds onto power in a very blunt violation of the electoral process, in any of those three scenarios you will face challenges,” said Dib, WOLA’s Venezuela programme director.
“You also have the six-month period between these elections and the moment whoever wins the elections will take power, so that period will also be very delicate,” she added.
What have other countries said about the election?
Western countries, especially the US, have been outspoken in their criticism of the Venezuelan government’s repressive actions.
But there are signs that the US, long open about its desire to see Venezuela’s socialist government replaced, is looking to soften its stance after decades of political and economic tensions.
Last October, the US agreed to loosen some sanctions on the country’s beleaguered oil sector, partly in the hope of boosting oil production amid surging global prices and partly in exchange for progress towards a free election.
The US is also hoping that improved economic conditions can help decrease the number of Venezuelans seeking refuge within its borders.
“The risk that more people could flee is also a major concern for other countries in the region, especially for Colombia, which has received around 35 percent of that [migrating] population, but of course also for the US,” said Dibs.
However, following the suspension of Machado’s presidential campaign and the arrest of several opposition members, the administration of US President Joe Biden reimposed some, but not all, of the loosened sanctions.
Other governments in the region, including those critical of US sanctions, have also called on Maduro to respect the will of the voters.
“I have told Maduro that the only chance for Venezuela to return to normality is to have a widely respected electoral process,” Brazil’s left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in a statement this month.
“He has to respect the democratic process.”