President Maduro Leads Voting Intentions Ahead of the Venezuelan Elections on July 28

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro enters the Bolivar Stadium, July 17, 2024. Photo: X/ @ELESPINITO

July 17, 2024 Hour: 2:37 pm

He is very likely to win the election with over 53 percent of the vote, according to two recent studies.

On Wednesday, the Center for Measurement and Interpretation of Statistical Data (CEMIDE 50.1) presented data from a survey of electoral preferences ahead of the Venezuelan presidential elections on July 28.

“There is a very high probability that the candidate from the Great Patriotic Pole, President Nicolas Maduro, will win with 53 percent of the vote,” said Giovanni Nani Lozada, the rector of Arturo Michelena University.

“The possibility of vote polarization is minimal, according to field studies conducted using artificial intelligence, which helps eliminate the biases observed in other studies,” he stated, adding that most local opinion studies do not usually take into account the multiple factors that influence the electoral decision.

“The first question that should be asked in a survey is whether the person is registered in the electoral roll and then their voting intention,” he said, mentioning that 72 percent of Venezuelans registered to vote are people aged 35 and older.

Un show de drones alumbró el cielo de Maracaibo con la cara del mandatario venezolano @NicolasMaduro y los símbolos de su campaña electoral durante la inauguración de la segunda parte del parque Ana María Campos. pic.twitter.com/XgDMzE018l
— Madelein Garcia (@madeleintlSUR) July 13, 2024

The text reads, “During the inauguration of the Ana Maria Campos park, a drone show illuminated the sky of Maracaibo with the face of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and symbols of his campaign.”

For this reason, Nani Lozada questioned those surveys based on opinions expressed on social media, as the major content generators on these platforms are people between 16 and 24 years old, according to Boston Consulting. However, this age group only represents 6 percent of the Venezuelan electoral roll, he pointed out.

“The fact that young people are content producers on social media will not be significant in the July 28 elections, although it could be in the future,” Nani Lozada said.

“Forty-one percent of the Venezuelan electoral roll is made up of people aged 50 and older. Their presence on social media, however, barely represents 2 percent. Definitely, in no way can we take social media as a gauge of what could happen in an election,” he concluded.

In another voting intentions survey, the company Dataviva also found that Maduro captures 56 percent of electoral preferences, far surpassing Gonzalez Urrutia, who leads the opposition vote with 19 percent.

The rest of the candidates obtain the following values: Jose Brito (8.2), Antonio Ecarri (2.1), Javier Bertucci (1.7), Claudio Fermin (1.5), Daniel Ceballos (1.2), Benjamin Rausseo (1.1), Luis Martinez (0.7), and Enrique Marquez (0.3). Approximately 8 percent of respondents did not express their voting preferences.