News from the campaign of Nicolás Maduro, Edmundo González and others

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As Venezuela prepares for presidential elections on July 28, Chavismo looks closer than ever to losing power in its 25 years of government after a prolonged economic crisis, according to surveys by ORC consultants, in the face of an opposition that appears largely united on polling day.

The collapse of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the past decade and the departure of more than 7.7 million Venezuelans from the country may not be enough to explain the conditions that framed the campaign, as the recession was ongoing until the 2018 elections. The migratory movement had been underway for several years.
And if in 2018 the Venezuelan Supreme Court excluded the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition, which then brought together a large part of the opposition, considering that its participation violated the ban on dual militancy, this time it did not allow the winner of the primaries, María Corina Machado, to run due to her continued disqualification from holding elected positions by the Comptroller General of the Republic. Then, her substitute, Corina Yoris, could not register.

“The opposition has never been this close to victory,” Benigno Alarcón, director of the Center for Political and Government Studies at the Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB), told CNN, referring to a potential victory in the election for candidate González, the leader in the polls.

Read the full analysis here