Review of Venezuela's Presidential Campaign 13 Days Before the Elections

By Misión Verdad – Jul 15, 2024

The schedule for the presidential elections on July 28 in Venezuela is being fulfilled as established. Last Thursday, July 4, the electoral campaign formally began with rallies by the various candidates who are competing for the highest office. Thus, with only 13 days to go until the crucial day and 10 days to go until the end of the campaigning, we want to draw up an initial assessment of these opening hours.

Beyond the propagandist euphoria and the demagogic proposals, we see some characteristics that are defining the two main contending blocks: Chavismo, centered around the candidacy of Nicolás Maduro, and the sector of the opposition that supports Edmundo González Urrutia. In this analysis, we will delve into the most visible strategies of each side, leaving aside the unprecedented characteristics of these elections, already addressed by the analyst William Serafino.

La elección presidencial del 28J tiene un conjunto de atributos distintivos que la hacen atípica y especial con respecto a los eventos de estas características en las últimas dos décadas.
Más allá de la pulsión propagandística y demagógica predominante en consultores por…
— William Serafino (@williamserafino) July 7, 2024

Chavismo
Chavismo has concentrated during this last quarter of the year 2024, specifically in these first 11 days of the campaign, on strengthening the organizational structure of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) presented in the 1x10x7 strategy, which integrates all the structures that maintain a direct dialogue with the communities (UBCH, CLAPs, public representatives, etc.).

This strategy could be a response to the unprecedented characteristics surrounding the current elections—the country has been experiencing nine uninterrupted years of sanctions and its standard-bearer, the candidate for re-election, is subject to an international arrest warrant—which is why the campaign requires strengthening ties with the electorate at the local level.

Contact at the grassroots level, a strategy proposed by President Nicolás Maduro when presenting the campaign command staff, requires mobilizing communication at five levels: in the street, on social media platforms, in traditional media, on walls, and through the so-called “radiobemba,” (word of mouth) with the firm objective of confronting manipulation and lies.

Chavismo has understood that ensuring victory on July 28 will require, in addition to mobilization, truly efficient machinery, which exists beyond paper or computer lists and which works in a synchronized, auditable, and proven manner, in tune with the strategies and lines of action of President Maduro, who prioritize dialogue with the people.

On the other hand, the government resorts to showing the achievements, not a few, that the Maduro government has achieved in economic management, which we could summarize as the curbing of inflation, which was 1% in June and 8.9% since January; in the control of the exchange rate, whose variation in the dollar-bolivar relationship was 1.56% between January and July 2024; and in the continuous growth, for 12 consecutive quarters, of the economy.

Unlike the opposition’s proposal, Chavismo can speak openly about the government program of its standard-bearer who, while maintaining its own project, focused on the country’s capabilities, does not resort to the old but still fashionable neoliberal policies of privatization, state downsizing, and economic shock, the opposition’s proposal that they intend to establish if they win the elections.

Opposition supporting Edmundo Gonzalez
This sector of the opposition has concentrated its efforts on promoting a narrative that considers its victory inevitable given the “overwhelming” popular support it maintains. In this sense, they have tried to shield this narrative with a media operation of surveys that confirm it, accompanied by the call for rallies in different places of the country where the initiative is always led by María Corina Machado, which ends up relegating the candidate and the parties that support her to a secondary plane.

Regarding the polls, various voices within the opposition ecosystem have made several calls not to take Edmundo González’s victory for granted just because the numbers show him as the favorite. On the contrary, they appeal to the main task of organizing the structure to defend the opposition vote, an area in which, by the way, they show an evident weakness.

In this manner, Francisco Rodríguez believes that the polls overestimate the opposition vote, which provides a distorted image of the true electoral preferences of the population. For Luis Vicente León, “the electoral dynamic is much more complex than the campaign jingles used by the commandos and candidates,” and he explains that:

Of course, a preferred candidate has an electoral advantage and can certainly win. That is the most important risk for those seeking to retain power. But to think that this is enough to guarantee a victory is rather superficial. In any election, you can win or lose, regardless of the popularity levels of the actors in contention. If you have any doubts, you can ask Mrs. Le Pen, who went from being the favorite in France to third place in the results. But you can check experiences such as that of Ortega against Chamorro in Nicaragua, Atanas Mockus in Colombia, or the anti-Brexit in England.

These critical views on the opposition’s triumphalism have sparked a series of attacks against this pair of analysts, which demonstrate the exacerbated intolerance that runs through the sentiment of a sector of the opposition that, denying the wining [real] possibilities of the standard-bearer of Chavismo, hints at the intentions of ignoring the results if they are unfavorable to them, and thus opening the floodgates again to a spiral of violence already denounced by the Venezuelan government.

Beyond July 28
Chavismo is basing its strategy on strengthening the organization and mobilization of its electoral base in the run-up to election day, which would not only guarantee its victory but also its defense against the claims of non-recognition that are already being explicitly outlined by extremist sectors of the opposition.

The opposition, on the other hand, seems to be counting on Edmundo González’s victory on July 28, which creates a mirage that could justify a violent mobilization to ignore the results based on the frustration of followers who, seeing everything through the polls presented on social media platforms, make Chavismo invisible as a truly existing political force and ignore a country that is seeking peace, stability, and economic recovery.

However, as the electoral body had foreseen, the schedule continues to be fulfilled as established, and in Venezuela, we will have presidential elections on July 28, 2024, widely supported by various international actors, technologically robust, and fully transparent, for the peace of mind of the country’s electorate who will attend the 31st electoral event in a quarter of a century.

(Misión Verdad)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/JRE/SL