To the euphoria of supporters in and around his campaign headquarters, the National Electoral Council announced the president [Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez] had secured 54.4% of the votes, while his rival Capriles was behind with 44.9%. Some votes were still to be counted, but the council said the result was not in doubt.
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The opposition camp were also also due to comment. Hours earlier they had claimed that exit polls showed their candidate had won by a comfortable margin.
Chavez is facing his stiffest electoral challenge to date in his race to defeat Capriles, who has widened his lead to almost 5 percentage points in a poll conducted by Consultores 21 ahead of the Oct. 7 vote.
Capriles had 51.8 percent support against 47.2 percent for Chavez among Venezuelans who said they’re sure to vote, the Caracas-based company’s vice president Saul Cabrera said today.
If the opposition weren’t such a bunch of liars, they might have had a chance to beat Chavez. Only Americans seem to think that lying is acceptable in leaders.
Unless they’re Democrats lying about an affair, of course.
Another highly predictable thing that will never be predicted by the US press is that a Romney presidency would be an absolute disaster for the US.
Anyway, Chavez got re-elected because, despite his rather obvious flaws, the lives of the 70% of Venezuela that is very poor have improved, something that eluded all the preceding right-wing regimes. And he pretty clearly cares about seeing things improve, even if he’s not particularly ept in making them do so. And the US and British press has been lying about how close the race was. And no one could possibly predict that the public will stop relying on them as a consequence.