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President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro has won Venezuela’s presidential election, according to partial results published by the electoral council.<\/p>\n
The head of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Elvis Amoroso, who is a close ally of Mr Maduro, said that with 80% of votes counted, President Maduro had 51.2% of the vote, compared to 44.2% for his main rival.<\/p>\n
The Venezuelan opposition has alleged widespread fraud in the counting of votes, and has vowed to challenge the result.<\/p>\n
It had united behind candidate Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez in order to unseat Mr Maduro after 11 years in power.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The opposition deployed thousands of witnesses to polling stations across the country to be able to announce its own vote count.<\/p>\n
However, a spokeswoman for the coalition led by Mr Gonz\u00e1lez said that their witnesses had been “forced to leave” at many polling stations.<\/p>\n
The opposition had also called on supporters to keep a vigil at voting centres to verify the counting process in the “decisive hours” after closing, amid widespread fears the government would attempt to steal the vote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Opinion polls had given Mr Gonz\u00e1lez a wide lead over Mr Maduro.<\/p>\n
Many voters said that they wanted change after 25 years in which the socialist PSUV party has been in power – first under the leadership of the late President Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, and after his death from cancer in 2013, under Nicol\u00e1s Maduro.<\/p>\n
Under their leadership, the PSUV has gained control not just of the executive and the legislative, but also of much of the judiciary.<\/p>\n
The last election in 2018 was widely dismissed as neither free nor fair and there had been widespread fear in the run-up to this election that the poll could also be beset by irregularities. <\/p>\n
Those fears were further stoked by President Maduro, who said he would win “by hook or by crook”.<\/p>\n
The opposition nevertheless struck a positive note going into the election, arguing that if their supporters turned out en masse, it would make it very hard for the government to “steal the election”.<\/p>\n
Voting in Venezuela is electronic. Voters punch in a button assigned to their preferred candidate on a voting machine.<\/p>\n
The electronic results are sent to the CNE headquarters, but the machine also prints out a paper receipt which is then placed in a ballot box.<\/p>\n
By law, parties are allowed to send witnesses to the count of these paper receipts carried out at each polling station, but many were prevented from doing so.<\/p>\n
The opposition said it had been given access to less than a third of the printed receipts.<\/p>\n
Their plan had been to monitor these tallies to see if they squared with the results announced by the CNE.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n