CARACAS, Venezuela – The polling firm Meganálisis found in a study published this weekend that “nobody” is leading the race in the Venezuelan establishment opposition’s upcoming presidential primary election.
About 29 percent of respondents favor “nobody” over any of the current candidates vying for the nomination to appear on the ballot against socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro.
The Venezuelan “opposition” is organizing primary election scheduled for October in anticipation of a potential presidential election against Maduro in 2024. The socialist regime has not chosen a date for the race and Maduro threatened last month to abruptly hold the vote this year, disrupting any potential attempt at an opposition campaign.
The election – organized by the Venezuelan National Electoral Council (CNE), an institution controlled by the Maduro regime – is largely expected to be a sham given the socialist regime’s extensive track record of rigged elections. The Maduro regime has offered no safeguards to ensure a free and fair race.
Meganálisis’ CEO and president Rubén Chirino told Breitbart News on Monday that the opposition primary election is an area of the Venezuelan political field with “great significance” in 2023, as the opposition has no clear leadership after the ouster and exile of former President Juan Guaidó. Thus, he explained, the opposition needs to find a candidate “who faithfully represents the desires, interests and perspectives of the country.”
Meganálisis’s April national poll indicates they are far from finding that person. Among all respondents, 28.7 percent said their preferred primary candidate was “nobody,” higher than the 20.7 percent who said they did not know who to vote for and higher than the support for any actual candidate.
Venezuelan conservative opposition leader María Corina Machado found herself in second place after “nobody,” with 22.1 percent expressing their intention to vote for her. The former lawmaker and head of the country’s only mainstream center-right party, Vente Venezuela, declared socialism as the main enemy of Venezuelans in April.
Manuel Rosales, the current governor of Zulia state and main rival to Hugo Chávez during the 2006 presidential election, trails behind Machado in vote intention with 9.8 percent, followed by Venezuelan comedian Benjamín Rausseo with 5.9 percent, and perennial presidential candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski with 5.7 percent. Capriles is running despite having been banned from holding any kind of public office through 2032.
Juan Guaidó, who served as the nation’s legitimate but powerless president until December 2022 and is currently in the United States after being exiled from Colombia last week, trailed with 4.1 percent. The remaining candidates in the list collectively amount to 3 percent.
The low support for any candidate is a result of years of distrust that the general population in Venezuela, even those who oppose Maduro, has developed for the opposition. Results from a Meganálisis study published in May 2022 found that roughly 80 percent of Venezuelans believed that members of the Venezuelan “opposition” were “sellouts” and were doing nothing to end socialism in the country.
The continued lack of trust in establishment “opposition” figureheads has translated into high distrust ratings in Meganálisis’ latest study. Participants in the study were asked which of the opposition primary candidates they had no confidence in.
Guaidó leads the distrust rating charts with an 86.7 percent, seconded by Henrique Capriles Radonski with 80.9 percent.
Henry Falcón, a former Chavista and one of Maduro’s handpicked rivals during the sham 2018 presidential election, took the third spot with a 77.1 percent distrust rating, while comedian Benjamín Rausseo occupies the fourth spot with 66.1 percent. Rausseo, who had previously run as an independent candidate during the 2006 presidential election only to withdraw from the race two weeks before the election, counted with an initial upward trend in preliminary polls prior to formalizing his candidacy in April.
Chirino explained that Rausseo’s elevated and recent distrust ratings are due to recent statements that have “publicly associated” him with Chavismo. The Venezuelan comedian asserted in April that, if elected president, he would not extradite United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) vice president and alleged drug lord Diosdado Cabello to the United States — or any other Venezuelan politician.
Asked whether they preferred the involvement of Venezuela’s top election oversight body, the CNE, in the upcoming elections or not, 82.5 percent told Meganálisis that the primary election must be held without CNE’s presence and through manual voting. Only 9.1 percent answered that the primary election should count with CNE’s presence and the use of their automated voting machines.
When asked for their reasons as to why should the CNE not participate in the opposition primary elections, 94.3 percent answered that it is because the candidate that “best suits Chavismo” would then win — similarly, 60.3 percent answered that they believe the regime would make sure that the worst opposition candidate wins.
Another 82.5 percent answered that they do not want CNE to be involved in the primary because it means that the Maduro regime would have a list of those who participated, while 75.9 percent also answered that it would mean that the regime knows who they voted for.
The high distrust and lack of confidence that the CNE will hold the secrecy of participants and their vote intention is justified in the events of the infamous “Tascon List” that occurred nearly 29 years ago in Venezuela. In 2004, the Venezuelan opposition organized to remove Hugo Chávez from power via a recall referendum. The CNE provided late Chavista lawmaker Luis Tascon with the data of all who had signed and supported the referendum. To this day, the software, while rudimentary by today’s standards, is still used to discriminate against those who signed up to recall Chávez. Those on the list are barred from obtaining public sector jobs or government benefits.
Chirino noted in his remarks to Breitbart News that most opponents of the regime view the CNE as an entity at the service of Maduro and whose presence “does not provide guarantees to the voters of the primaries.”
“Failure to satisfy these demands of the majority of the opposition in the country [for a fair oversight agency] is a threat to participation and therefore the legitimacy of the primaries for the opposition,” Chirino said.
Distaste for the establishment “opposition” has not improved public attitudes towards Maduro and the authoritarian socialist regime. Meganálisis found that 73.1 percent of respondents believe that Venezuela will not have a future of “progress, hope, and full of possibilities” under the ruling socialist regime.
Meganálisis’s study also found that 85.5 percent of respondents answered that they believed that socialism “has brought misery, despair, family separation and poverty” to Venezuelans against 12.3 percent that believe that socialism “has brought well-being, hope, unity and wealth.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.