CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelans will vote in a presidential election on Sunday that could bring about major political change or extend for another six years the policies that have caused the world’s worst peacetime economic collapse.
Whether President Nicolás Maduro or his main opponent, retired diplomat Edmundo González, is elected, the election will have ripple effects across the Americas.
Both government opponents and supporters have said that if Maduro is re-elected, they will join the exodus of 7.7 million Venezuelans who have already left the country to seek opportunities abroad.
Polls opened at 6am but at some polling stations across the country voters lined up much earlier and shared water, coffee and snacks for several hours.
Alejandro Zurbaran lined up at 5pm on Saturday to secure the first seat at his polling station. He said he was standing outside his primary school in the hills outside the capital, Caracas, praying for “the future of the country.”
“We are all here for the change we want to see,” Zurbaran, 74, who works in maintenance, said as other voters nodded in agreement.
An estimated 17 million people are eligible to vote in this presidential election. Polls close at 6 p.m., but it is unclear when election officials will announce the first results.
Authorities set Sunday’s election to coincide with the 70th birthday of former President Hugo Chavez, the revered leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013, leaving the Bolivarian Revolution in Maduro’s hands.
But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for depressing wages, fueling hunger, crippling the oil industry and causing family separations through migration.
Maduro, 61, faces an opposition party that has only managed to field one candidate after years of internal party divisions and election boycotts thwarted their ambitions to topple the ruling party.
Gonzalez was elected in April to represent the opposition coalition as a last-minute replacement for opposition strongman Maria Corina Machado, who had been blocked from running for any public office for 15 years by the Maduro-controlled Supreme Court of Justice.
Machado, a former lawmaker, won a landslide victory in opposition primary elections in October with more than 90% of the vote.
After being barred from running for president, she chose a university professor as her replacement, but the National Electoral Commission banned her from registering either, so political newcomer Gonzalez was chosen.
There are eight candidates challenging Maduro in Sunday’s vote, but Gonzalez is the only one who poses a threat to Maduro’s power.
Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves and was once Latin America’s most advanced economy, but it has plummeted since Maduro came to power.
A sudden drop in oil prices, widespread shortages, and hyperinflation of over 130,000 percent first sparked social unrest and then mass emigration.
Sanctions imposed by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, seeking to remove Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection, have been condemned by the United States and dozens of other countries as lacking legitimacy but have only deepened the crisis.
Maduro has crisscrossed Venezuela in recent days, inaugurating hospital wards and highways and visiting rural areas he has not set foot in for years.
His appeal to voters is economic stability, which he underlines with talk of entrepreneurship, stable currency exchange and low inflation.
President Maduro said he would recognize the election results and called on all other candidates to publicly declare that they would do the same.
“No one will create chaos in Venezuela,” Maduro said after the vote. “I recognize and will continue to recognize the electoral jury and the official announcements, and I will make sure that they are recognized.”
Commercial activity has increased in the capital, Caracas, since the pandemic and the International Monetary Fund predicts that the economy, which shrank 71% between 2012 and 2020, is expected to grow 4% this year, one of the fastest rates in Latin America.
“They tried to subjugate our people,” Maduro said of the United States at his final rally in Caracas on Thursday. “But today we stand tall and are ready for victory on July 28.”
But most Venezuelans have not seen an improvement in their quality of life. Many earn less than $200 a month, and families struggle to afford basic goods, some working second or third jobs. A basket of basic foods, enough to feed a family of four for a month, costs an estimated $385.
Judith Cantilla, 52, said she voted because she wanted change. Voting in the working-class Petare neighborhood in eastern Caracas, she said people were tired of the current system.
“For me, change in Venezuela means there are jobs, there is safety, there are medicines in the hospitals, teachers and doctors are paid well,” she said.
Meanwhile, Liana Ibarra, a manicurist in the Caracas metropolitan area, stood in line at 3 a.m. on Sunday carrying a backpack packed with water, coffee and cassava snacks, finding at least 150 people ahead of her.
“There used to be a lot of apathy towards elections, but that’s not the case anymore,” Ibarra said.
She said if Gonzalez loses, she plans to ask a relative living in the U.S. to sponsor her and her son for legal immigration.
“I can’t take it anymore,” she said.
The opposition has sought to exploit the vast inequalities that have resulted from a crisis that has seen Venezuelans abandon their national currency, the bolivar, for the U.S. dollar.
Messrs. Gonzalez and Machado focused their campaigns in Venezuela’s vast interior, which has not seen the economic boom seen in Caracas in recent years.
They promised a government that would create enough jobs to allow Venezuelans living abroad to return home and reunite with their families.
About a quarter of Venezuelans would consider leaving the country if Maduro wins Sunday, according to an April poll by Caracas-based Delfos, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Most of the Venezuelans who have emigrated in the past 11 years have settled in Latin America and the Caribbean, but in recent years many have begun to turn their attention to the United States.
The two campaigns stand out not only for the political movements they represent but also for how they have addressed the hopes and fears of voters.
Maduro’s rallies have featured lively electronic meringue dancing and speeches attacking his opponents.
But Maduro faltered after he drew criticism from leftist allies including Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for warning of a “bloodbath” if he was defeated.
His son told the Spanish newspaper El Pais that he would hand over the presidency peacefully if the ruling party was defeated, a rare admission of vulnerability that is at odds with the triumphalist tone of Maduro’s camp.
By contrast, at the rally for Gonzalez and Machado, people cried and chanted “Freedom! Freedom!” as the pair passed by.
People handed rosaries to devout Catholics and walked along highways and through military checkpoints to reach their rallies, some making video calls to relatives who had emigrated to catch a glimpse of the candidate.
At a rally in mid-May, Gonzalez, 74, asked supporters to imagine “a country where our airports and borders are filled with children being returned home.”
