2024 Venezuelan presidential election

On 28 July 2024, Presidential elections were held in Venezuela to choose the president for the next six-years. ^[2][3] The elections were neither free nor fair, as they took place in a context in which Nicolás Maduro's government controlled all branches of government and persecuted its opponents.

The current president Nicolás Maduro ran for his third term in a row. Former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia represented the Unitary Platform (Spanish: Plataforma Unitaria Democrática; PUD), the main opposition party. Other candidates of the Venezuelan Opposition were banned from running in the election by the government. The opposition rejected the figures, stating that Edmundo González had won with 70% of the vote according to the available electoral records.

Candidates Enrique Márquez, Claudio Fermín, and Antonio Ecarri also demanded the publication of the vote count. Several countries expressed their opposition to the results and pointed out irregularities.

Polls made before the election predicted that González would win by a large majority. After the government-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) announced partial results showing that Maduro had won by a small majority on 29 July, some world leaders doubted the claimed results. They chose to not recognize the claims made by the CNE,^[4][5] with some exceptions including the leaders of Russia, China, Iran, Cuba and others, who congratulated Maduro on his victory.^[6]

Both González and Maduro claim they won.

After the results were announced, protests broke out across the country and the Maduro regime detained political figures from the opposition.