On July 28, approximately twenty-one million voters will choose the president and vice president of Venezuela. Increasingly authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro is running for a third six-year term against opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia and eight other candidates. During his reign, the economy has more than halved, political space has closed, and many Venezuelans have voted with their feet. Nearly eight million people, or about a fifth of the population, have fled the country since Maduro first took office in 2013, creating one of the world's biggest displacement crises. Most remained in Latin America and the Caribbean; an estimated three million live in neighboring Colombia alone.
Edmundo González Urrutia is a retired diplomat and relative newcomer to electoral politics, and is the candidate of the United Platform, the main opposition coalition. He currently has a significant lead in independent polls. Incumbent since 2013, Maduro trails González Urrutia by about twenty percentage points in most independent polls, although some report the gap has narrowed since December. The government approved eight other candidates, who collectively polled about 10 percent or less.
A potential opposition victory would bring new opportunities for democracy and political stability. González Urrutia has committed to restoring independent institutions—courts, legislatures, and government agencies—restoring freedom of speech, and releasing all political prisoners in Venezuela. On the other hand, some pollsters predict that his defeat could wipe the opposition off Venezuela's political map, making future democracy even less likely.
The opposition is seeking to revive the economy after the country's gross domestic product has shrunk by about three-quarters. More than 80 percent of Venezuelans live in poverty, and nearly 70 percent of hospitals lack basic services and medical supplies. And although six months ago the United States eased sanctions and thereby increased Venezuela’s oil revenues, the authorities failed to increase production by more than one million barrels per day.
González Urrutia has not yet presented a formal economic plan, but he has joined Machado, which includes the privatization of state-owned companies, including the oil business. In addition to supporting the transition to renewable energy, González Urrutia supports obtaining loans from multilateral organizations to pay off Venezuela's estimated $150 billion debt, assessing the state oil company and mitigating the environmental and social impacts of the country's mining industry.
If Maduro wins, millions of Venezuelans are likely to join the nearly eight million who now live abroad. According to a May survey by the Venezuelan company Meganálisis, about 40 percent of Venezuelans—about ten million people, mostly young people—would consider leaving the country; most of them will end up in neighboring countries. Others will travel further toward the United States. In 2023, more than 328,000 Venezuelans crossed the Darién Gap, a sixty-mile forest route between Colombia and Panama on their way to the southern U.S. border.
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