Venezuela Opposition Claims 65-35 Lead as CNE Proclaims Maduro Victory

Venezuelan Opposition Claims 65-35 Lead with Hidden Ballots

While the National Electoral Council proclaimed Nicolás Maduro with 51.20% of the votes—5,150,092 supporters—the opposition released a very different count based on their officials' tally sheets. Of the ballots they managed to recover, around 30% of the total, the result was 65% to 35%. In that third of polling stations, the margin soared to 75% for the opposition. The other 70% was not shown. Nor was it made public.

The data emerged gradually during the election night, and no authority confirmed it. Opposition officials—referred to as "witnesses" there—denied that the Electoral Command denied them access to centers and that the "computerized" system yielded no single official figure when dawn had already broken.

The 70% of ballots the CNE does not publish

The central complaint was not the margin, but the silence. The body is required to publish the ballots online, polling station by polling station, and that step never came. With one-third of the tally sheets in hand, the opposition's most optimistic calculation held that covering the gap was impossible: to reverse a 65-35 lead would require more than a recount. In the State of Táchira, one of the largest, clashes had already been reported. The rumor of a possible self-coup to avoid recognizing the numbers was spreading everywhere, and Diosdado Cabello urged his supporters to take to the streets to "protect the results."

The party count that sums to 132%

The ridicule came with the sums. Several circulating tally sheets showed impossible totals: a distribution that summed to 132.2% among all parties and up to eight formations with the same 4.6%. Another count gave a 134%. A global percentage that defies elementary arithmetic is, in any audit, a red flag. For those circulating the tally sheets, it was not a system failure, but proof of numbers cooked by hand.

Boric, Sánchez, and Zapatero: The International Reaction

Cautions came from abroad. Chilean President Gabriel Boric wrote that the published results were "difficult to believe" and demanded transparency in the ballots. It was taken for granted that Pedro Sánchez would unofficially endorse the result, and the recurrent presence of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in Venezuela during those days fueled all kinds of speculation about the toll an electoral upset might take on the PSOE. Spain, meanwhile, announced a protest to the OAS over a derogatory comment about Zapatero. Some saw this as the script for a tonalidad revolution; on the other side, the response was the usual one: foreign interference.

The Hoax of Stolen Ballot Boxes That Were Air Conditioners

Disinformation played on both sides. A video about a supposed theft of ballot boxes by armed groups, spread by Elon Musk, turned out to be something else: the stolen material was air conditioning units. The community's note fell on the publication, and even the one who spread it ended up deleting the message. The episode left an uncomfortable lesson: on a night without official ballots, verification becomes the first victim.

Sanctions, GDP, and Poverty: The Underlying Economic Fight

Behind the electoral struggle lies the economic argument, and there the figures do not reconcile either. One side notes that Venezuela's per capita GDP is at the level of 30 and 40 years ago, that cumulative inflation in these years is around 130,000%, and that, according to the UN rapporteur, nearly 82% of the population lives in poverty and 53% in extreme poverty. The other responds that the economy has been rebounding for five years, that the country is self-sufficient in food, and that the mega-sanctions from the region's leading power explain much of the disaster. The full breakdown, item by item, leaves a income jump that neither side bothers to reconcile.

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The night left a figure summarizing the struggle: nearly eight million Venezuelans abroad, waiting for the results from Lima, Santiago, Buenos Aires, or Panama. At closing time, the electoral body still had not published the ballots, the opposition did not recognize the result, and Maduro was already proclaimed. What remained to be known fit into a 70% of ballots no one had seen.