My personal take on today's vote and results

From previous post it is clear that today's results are going to be a surprise to all. The only thing we can truly measure is how rotten may be the Venezuelan elector which only votes for its own benefit, regardless of what a lousy living condition s/he is subjected to.  The value added for chavismo is resentment which makes for a desire to punish those that have more than what they do, even if themselves have grown fat in the last decade. The added value for the opposition is to start steeling itself for the hard fighting days ahead. How these two opposite values will play is only going to be sensed tonight: they will truly come to be the major factors only when hunger starts hitting people sometime next year when it will force them to either question a system that does not provide, or an indolence to fight back and unjust system.

Electoral numbers for 14/04: December 2012 reality

In the post October funk, followed by the January 9 coup, I never got around to analyze the December 2012 governor result. Not that it mattered much but if we want seriously to evaluate any chances Capriles may have in three weeks, we need to understand the most recent results  namely the comparison between Chavez October victory and December sympathy vote. A single graph will suffice, comments after the jump.

Numbers from CNE, rounded up, in hundred of thousand votes, including or not "dissident" candidates depending on how big their vote was. Excluding embassies and Caracas which did not vote in December.

The recovery of the opposition is far from starting

If you think that after Sunday 16 the drubbing of the opposition is over, think again.  Some of its past decisions are going to come to haunt the MUD. Actually, it is already starting.

The scenario right now, at least if we interpret the cryptic messages from chavismo, is that Chavez may recover but not for January 10. There is already in preparation yet another constitutional coup where the limit date for swearing in of January 10 may be pushed over. Or said swearing be held in a Havana hospital. Then again we are a Cuban colony and this does not trouble me at all, it is logical.

Is there something worth rescuing from yesterday's debacle?

I think there is really no point in discussing yesterday's results in detail. Eventually in a few days I may write an additional post about it, but whether PJ did well here and bad there, or whether AD resisted better than expected in Tucusiapon is totally irrelevant. The game has changed dramatically:  we are all waiting for Chavez demise and that is the game in town for the next 6 months. Unless of course Cuban medicine is finally shown to be all that is cracked up to be. One sure thing, the Chavez example is not going to be Cuba best medical advertisement...

The bad is overwhelming  no matter what punditry you can read or see on TV today. The opposition will be in a very diminished situation if elections come in a few weeks from now. No states to rely on for basic campaign logistics, no income, no reserves left after two expensive campaign and a regime that has shown yesterday that the times of nice Chavez are over: frontal electoral cheating is going to be the norm for the next elections if we base ourselves on what we saw Sunday. Diosdado Cabello is not about the niceties of Chavez.

Can we possibly see something positive?

The short answer is NO, but the longer answer points to some stuff that is not that negative.

No mas cuentos: perdimos, y feo

Estuve leyendo y oyendo toda clase de cuentos y veo otra vez toda una maniobra tratando de minimizar la derrota de ayer. Supongo que la mayoría de los comentadores de oficio, o por lo menos a los que se le paga o invita por sus comentarios, no quieren quedar mal. Pero la verdad es otra: salimos mal, muy mal, peor que en octubre.

Empecemos por un cuadro sencillo que acabo de hacer, con las cifras del CNE publicadas hasta el momento. En la primera columna los votos del chavismo de Chávez. En la segundo los chavistas disidentes, pero con Chávez. La tercera son los candidatos de la MUD y la última los disidentes de la MUD que son dos en verdad, el Gato y le gafo en Tachira cuya disidencia no costo nada, Cesar Pérez Vivas necesitando otra escusa para justificar su derrota. No cuento votos muy minoritarios de candidatos evangélicos y otros, polvo cósmico esta vez.

El total porcentual del chavismo y su disidencia sobrepasa el de Chávez en octubre. Por poco, pero lo sobrepasa. El oficialismo sin Chávez no salió perjudicado por su ausencia, no salió perjudicado por la división. Esos son 5 millones de votos super sólidos que tiene ya a su favor Maduro o Diosdado a partir de Febrero, cuando Chávez decida llamar las próximas elecciones.

Digámoslo en otras palabras: la oposición no perdió solamente por la abstención y el ventajismo del oficialismo. Hay también otras razones que explican su derrota y mientras esas no se analicen debidamente nuestro lado no va a ganar nunca, o por lo menos mientras los cobres del petróleo sigan llegando y los chinos prestando.

Adelanto algunas de las causas que hay que analizar y que casi seguro no se harán por temor a ofender a no sé quien, como si eso hubiese resultado en el pasado.

¿Es el mensaje de al oposición suficientemente contundente? Me refiero, por ejemplo, a eso de perdonarle demasiadas marramucias al CNE o rezar por el bien de Chávez cuando el PSUV usa esa enfermedad al máximo, y exitosamente. O eso de no hablarle claro al país sobre la realidad aunque eso resulte desagradable para algunos. Churchill y de Gaulle no ganaron por endulzar el mensaje.

¿Cómo es posible que en algunos estados los electores chavistas sean tan ruines? Me refiero por ejemplo a Monagas donde la mujer que salió a defender a PDVSA contra el Gato, tratando de obligar la gente de Maturín a tomar agua envenenada salió elegida y con la pelusa de 55%. Hay que explicar como delincuentes de renombre internacional tal como Rodríguez Chacin o Rangel Silva arrasaron en sus estados. Quisiera saber si la oposición piensa que se derrota a esa gente con buenos modales, sin mencionar las fechorías registradas que han hecho.

Electoral note 3: the results are truly awful

The results are in.  I did spend actually a rather relaxing day, no TV, little computer.  But I semi tuned in this evening and the wait with the CNE on TV, the general mess, the armed civilians as if it were for war, remind me that we are becoming ever more of  the 4th world. That sort of did me in a little bit before any result was published.  Oh well....

Around 7 PM from the chavista headquarters here in San Felipe we could hear quite a few fireworks so I knew that as expected Yaracuy was a loss for the opposition.  No surprise whatsoever.  The surprise will come if Biagio Pilieri makes it to 45%.

I did not watch CNE's head Tibisay on TV again: I cannot stomach her anymore so I waited for the thing to pop up on the net to write this. I even kept Twitter in cool mode ...  So there we go: an unmitigated disaster for the opposition. Abstention was worse for our side than for chavismo as I expected since the electoral machinery of chavismo would give it an edge in this scenario.  The little bit of extra voting in late afternoon was too little  too late.

My "opposition defeat" 3+1 scenario was actually not good enough: we lost even Tachira, due to opposition divisions even though we won it against Chavez.  Mendez in Tachira has some serious accounting to do. We also lost Monagas were we went divided and the MUD would have to explain why the primaries of Monagas were iron clad but why in Miranda Capriles was allowed to push away Ocariz to get a very, very meager 4% margin. At least, since we must find silver linings wherever we can, for better or for worse the leaders of the opposition are now Henri Falcon and Henrique Capriles. Good thing it seems they get along fine.

I was very pessimistic in my forecast but this is even worse...  What happened?

The joyless October 8, today

I was trying to figure a way to end the series on the October results and the new panorama for Venezuela. To understand some of the stuff that is going on these days in both sides of the spectrum, I do not know why but I started thinking about the sad Monday morning of October 8. And I got my ending.

That morning was sad for the Capriles voters, but it was not very joyful for the other crowd. Besides a few 10PM  fireworks from city hall in San Felipe, chavismo had no celebration except for a quick parade late in the afternoon.  And that was not an impromptu affair: I saw it when government vehicles bedecked in red Chavez paraphernalia were gathering at the entry of San Felipe. The caravan went around for maybe 15 minutes, blaring, honking, and that was that.

The 2012 Prez results: elections in Venezuela were neither free, fair nor democratic

We keep playing the democratic game, we keep improving ourselves, we keep finding adequate retorts to the treachery of chavismo and yet we keep falling on our faces because chavismo is reckless in its pursuit to retain power at all cost and creates ever more outrageous ways to cheat for which not only we are not prepared, but for which, after Sunday 7, we may never be able to get prepared.

The elections were not free

It is clear now that there were a lot of people that voted under duress. They were scared to find out at 3 PM that that the chavista electoral steam roller knew they had not voted yet. They got scared when they were hauled unto a van with other people that had not voted yet and were also found out. They were scared when they arrived at the voting center and saw strange machines and realized the privacy of vote was compromised. And thus they truly thought that chavismo would know whether they voted for Chavez or not.

The 2012 Prez results: the substance of the raw numbers

This is, I hope, the one before last of this series. After having looked at some of the details that allow us to understand the enormity of what happened last October 7, we are, I hope, more prepared to consider the bigger picture. I know, it is kind of taking things in reverse order, but sometimes it pays to look at details from the periphery before tacking the big problem. I did it all the time when I used to be a researcher.

Post mortems from other people

I want to accuse that we have been for months
without water, electricity, security, hospitals...
BUT WE WON!!!!!!!!

Yesterday and Sunday there were a few OpEd on what went wrong in the Capriles campaign. Some go as far as putting some of the blame on Capriles which I think is somewhat unfair since the organization asked him to campaign while they took care of everything else. As far as I am concerned, even though I did not agree with some of the improvisations Capriles did, I will say that he did the best he could, which is more than what can be said for a lot of people inside the Unidad.  Two of these pieces are going to be enough to show you that the aggiornamento of the opposition ain't gonna happen any time soon.


I do not have major quips with Carlos Blanco Sunday piece. However there is a part that raised my eyebrows.

A deeper issue which has reared in the post electoral hangover is the profoundly reactionary and misguided notion that chavistas are assholes who sell for three thousand bolivars. It is not noticed that the politicization of the poor, the creation of a new elite, even the existence of a chavismo of suit and tie, are part of a new social and political reality. Insulting Nicolas Maduro because he was Metrobus driver and then became Foreign Minister is to fail to understand that in a real democracy, it is to be wished for that drivers of whatever can reach the highest positions. That's what AD did in its time and, say, a humble cobbler such as Augusto Malave Villalba, not gifted for oratory, who became a major union leader and politician, was teased likewise.

The 2012 Prez results: electoral fraud galore in Venezuela

There is outright electoral fraud and there is indirect electoral fraud. However, which one is the most effective depends on the situation. The big difference between the forms of electoral fraud is that the direct electoral fraud is usually cheaper, you just need to stuff the ballot box with the desired count. However, when found out, the consequences may be harsh for the cheating side. On the other hand  indirect fraud is considerably more expensive but it has the advantage that when everything is said and done those who sold their vote for any or other reason, did vote for the winner in the end. El Universal today carries some interesting information showing that both forms of fraud were at play one week ago.

The 2012 Prez result: your little friends at the ballot box

UPDATED In Venezuela there is that long running tradition that no matter how insignificant your political movement is you still want it to appear in the ballot box, hoping that with 0,2% of the votes cast you will be able to demonstrate that without your help the winner would not be so. 14 years of Chavez have not dented that deleterious habit, not even inside the chavista hegemony where Chavez has given up for the time being to preside over a unique party outside of any coalition. In fact Chavez has started stealing away other people's political party to refurbish a coalition of the naive. Let's look at the mosaic of political groups.

The 2012 Prez results: leadership and that uncaring voter

Two results did surprise me a lot and made me think about leadership qualities and how careless are voters in Venezuela. Not that this last one was a surprise....  Whatever you may think, it led me to think about the future of Capriles as a leader of the opposition that many are going to hate me for.

The 2012 Prez results: examining the chavista voting world

We need to face it, to look at Chavez numbers. Luckily I found a way to make it less painful.

The 2012 Prez results: as Caucagüita votes, so does the country

Enough of you seem to have forgiven me. And so let's get started with the Sunday results. And what better place than to start with Caucagüita which has been a long running monitor in this blog, the latest entry being when I started getting ready for the 2012 speculations.  Not only it will serve as the best way to understand what happened last Sunday but it will also serve as a detailed explanation while so many people got it all wrong last Sunday. We will start with a summary table.

The CNE is accused of a lot of things so for once I decided to go back on my data to include even the null votes.  And it is interesting even if it does not give a smoking gun to blame the CNE for the evils that we, the  opposition, suffer.

¿Ustedes quieren hablar de fraude? Pues hablemos…

El fraude estaba montado en el mismo tarjetón, con todas las tarjetas de Chávez arriba. Por lo tanto para votar para Chávez había que inclinarse algo hacia adelante y con los parabanes demasiados bajos eso se podía ver muy fácil.

The 2012 Prez results: Crystal ball gazers' Waterloo

Certainly before I write anything analytic on Sunday's numbers I need to make my mea culpa if I want to rescue any shred of credibility I may have left.