Chavez won the last presidential election (in 2006) with a 26% lead over the opposition candidate. With a little over a month to go, the AFP reported last week that “Most polls give Chavez leads of up to 35 percent to win the election.” I’m looking forward to seeing whether Chavez will defeat this year’s opposition candidate by an even wider margin! ’
>thankfully the tide seems to be turning I urge you to read the last sentence of the article submitted above: "[Most polls give Chavez leads of up to 35 percent to win the election](http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ien4Pn_g8yWFTatsHQ1MPOR2Hx9g?)." Keep in mind Chavez won the last presidential election by a 26% margin.
You do serious damage to your credibility when you make absolutely ridiculous allegations such as this… which are verifiably false! I’m sorry, but this is why I do not trust your perspective on Venezuelan politics.
Who is the “they” in your sentence? “Venezuelans” (the subject of the one-sentence-comment to which your comment was a response)? Or is it Chavez and his supporters who you are alleging “own the polling agencies”? And which polling agencies? Take your pick! Because nearly all of them show, and have shown for months, Chavez leads the opposition candidate by a wide margin and is likely to win re-election in two months.
Are you claiming that Chavez and his supporters own all of “the polling agencies”? The only polling agency that I’ve heard Capriles criticize is Hinterlaces, which shows Chavez leading by about 19 points. He accused the firm of publising “bogus polls”. In this attack on the integrity of this firm, he never claimed it was “owned by” Chavez.
The truth (the sources for which you can look up, or I can provide you if you don’t believe me) is there are just as many if not more links between polling agencies and the opposition (as there are between pollsters and the government). And pollsters like Datalisis, which in the past were considered sympathetic to the opposition, show Chavez leading by over 15%. Even reputable opposition blogs believe they accurately reflect public opinion.
The only polling firm that shows Capriles with a chance of winning is Consultores 21. Consultores’s record shows it has made some disastrously bad predictions in the past. For example, it underestimated Chavez’s support in the last presidential election (2006) by over 10 percentage points (it gave Chavez a 13% lead, but he won by 26%).
You do serious damage to your credibility when you make absolutely ridiculous allegations such as this… which are verifiably false! I’m sorry, but this is why I do not trust your perspective on Venezuelan politics.
Who is the “they” in your sentence? “Venezuelans” (the subject of the one-sentence-comment to which your comment was a response)? Or is it Chavez and his supporters who you are alleging “own the polling agencies”? And which polling agencies? Take your pick! Because nearly all of them show, and have shown for months, Chavez leads the opposition candidate by a wide margin and is likely to win re-election in two months.
Are you claiming that Chavez and his supporters own all of “the polling agencies”? The only polling agency that I’ve heard Capriles criticize is Hinterlaces, which shows Chavez leading by about 19 points. He accused the firm of publising “bogus polls”. In this attack on the integrity of this firm, he never claimed it was “owned by” Chavez.
The truth (the sources for which you can look up, or I can provide you if you don’t believe me) is there are just as many if not more links between polling agencies and the opposition (as there are between pollsters and the government). And pollsters like Datalisis, which in the past were considered sympathetic to the opposition, show Chavez leading by over 15%. Even reputable opposition blogs believe they accurately reflect public opinion.
The only polling firm that shows Capriles with a chance of winning is Consultores 21. Consultores’s record shows it has made some disastrously bad predictions in the past. For example, it underestimated Chavez’s support in the last presidential election (2006) by over 10 percentage points (it gave Chavez a 13% lead, but he won by 26%).
I really don’t think that’s what he’s doing. First, Venezuela holds nation-wide elections or referenda regularly, nearly every year. And so far, Chavez and his supporters have won 12 out of 13 of them. The opposition has accused Chavez of election fraud, but no accusation has ever proven to be credible. The country’s electoral system receives favorable evaluations by numerous reputable international organizations including the Carter Center, the Organization of American States (OAS), and the European Union (EU). Venezuela welcomes international observers to monitor its elections, something the U.S. never does. No clear cases of election fraud.
Second, why would Chavez resort to election fraud when nearly every poll (over the past several months), from nearly every pollster (out of many), shows him ahead of his main rival by a wide, double-digit margin? And with only a few months to go until the election, polls show Chavez maintaining or extending his lead; his opponent shows little momentum.
If anyone is taking “preemptive” action, it is the Venezuelan opposition! Consider how less credible their accusations of fraud will be when the election results turn out to reflect what the polls have been saying. Since the polls suggest a Chavez victory would reflect the people’s will, the opposition have begun to claim that the polls themselves are ‘rigged’. More than remaining optimistic despite the odds, it’s starting to look dangerous.
(Consider the August 3rd claim that “Capriles is”now winning in the polls", because one poll from June showed Capriles losing by less than 1%! In what universe is losing–45.8 to Chavez’s 45.9–’winning in the polls?)
Finally there is very good reason for Chavez to worry that the opposition might be planning to “refuse to accept the results if he is victorious” because, in contrast to Chavez, who has repeatedly promised that he would accept the electoral results and relinquish power if he loses in October, the opposition has still not publicly confirmed that they will accept the election results no matter what their outcome might be!
Venezuela has held thirteen nationwide elections or referenda since 1998. President Chavez and his supporters have won twelve of them. He has been and continues to be a hugely popular leader–this is just fact. In 2007, for the first time in nine years, Chavez was handed his first electoral defeat when his constitutional referendum (to amend the 1999 Constitution) was narrowly defeated (50.7% to 49.3%). He conceded the loss. In 2010, the mainstream media published numerous articles reporting the results of surveys and opinion polls showing a small decline in the President’s popularity rating from what it was once (at 70 percent in 2005). Since then, Chavez’s popularity rose back up from 43% in Spring 2010 to 59% in Fall 2011. Most recent polling shows his popularity remains unchanged, at 60%. A few mainstream news outlets have reported this surge. This year’s presidential election will be held on October 7. Most opinion polls show Chavez leading the opposition candidate by double-digits. I agree “you wouldn’t know it…” unless you kept an eye out for this data…. Anyway, I just thought it was worth sharing these numbers….
Polls show President Chavez with a double-digit lead over the opposition presidential candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski. Capriles has a better chance of winning against any of Chavez’s potential replacements.
The opinion polls released over the past couple of weeks have differed quite a lot in their results. Let’s review: the article mentions that “three surveys earlier in March found Chavez’s support at between 52 percent and 57 percent, versus 22 percent and 34 percent for Capriles.” These surveys were conducted by pollsters considered by some to be sympathetic to the government. So let’s assume these numbers exaggerate the gap between the candidates.
The article also mentions that “only one recent poll [Consultores 21] has put Capriles anywhere near Chavez, by placing him just 1 percentage point behind”. (Capriles himself touted these results showing “a kind of a technical tie”–but the same poll shows Chavez’s advantage rises to 6 percentage points among people most likely to vote in the election.) It may not come as a surprise, however, to learn that some consider Consultores 21’s polling to be sympathetic to the opposition. So let’s assume that Chavez is still holding onto a small but sizeable lead.
Datanalisis, the polling firm that gives Chavez “a solid 13-percentage point lead”, is identified with the opposition, but it is still respected–its numbers are probably the most reliable indication of public opinion right now.
I am pleased by the news that the Venezuelan people are apparently still standing by Chavez and the revolution after thirteen difficult years. But Capriles is a good candidate. This is a close race, and it may get closer yet.
The latest polls show Chavez in the lead, with one saying on Saturday that 56.5 percent of those surveyed planned to vote for the president, versus 26.6 percent for Capriles.