Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is widely believed to have fraudulently won Sunday's election, ensuring him another six-year term. Numerous regional governments cast doubt on the official vote tally, which showed Maduro with 51.2% of the vote with 80% of polling stations reporting.
The opposition contends that the results are not accurate, and claims that it won the election with 70% of the vote.
Polls taken over the course of the summer consistently showed opposition candidate Edmundo González winning by double-digit margins.
When the National Electoral Council announced around midnight that Maduro had received 51% of the vote compared to main opposition candidate González's 44% support, National Electoral Council President Elvis Amoroso said the results were based on 80% of voting stations and represented an irreversible trend.
Despite Maduro being declared the winner for a third term, the opposition claimed victory, setting up a showdown with the government over the results.
EXPERTS FEAR VENEZUELA'S MADURO COULD STEAL SUNDAY'S ELECTION AS OPPOSITION LEADS IN POLLS
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., condemned the result and criticized the policies of the Biden administration.
"Another foreign policy fiasco from the Biden-Harris team," he wrote on X. "They gave Maduro relief from Trump oil sanctions and released his top money launderer & his two convicted drug dealer nephews in exchange for a "promise" to hold fair elections monitored by neutral international observers."
The electoral authority, controlled by Maduro loyalists, did not immediately publish the results from each of the 30,000 polling booths across the country, impeding the opposition's ability to challenge the results after alleging it only had data for about 30% of the ballot boxes.
"The Venezuelans and the entire world know what happened," González said.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said González's margin of victory was "overwhelming." Machado said the opposition had voting results from about 40% of ballot boxes across the country and that more were expected overnight.
Officials and lawmakers in the U.S. and elsewhere expressed skepticism about the validity of Venezuela's presidential election results after Maduro was declared the victor.
A bipartisan group of congressional leaders alleged Maduro's victory to be fraudulent:
"To no one’s surprise, dictator Nicolás Maduro has once again stolen a presidential election. However, what the narco-regime will never steal is the Venezuelan people’s desire to return to democracy and live in freedom after decades of tyranny."
The statement continued, "We must prioritize uniting the free world in rejecting these sham election results and securing the release of the more than 300 Venezuelans that remain arbitrarily detained in torture centers as political prisoners."
Speaking in Tokyo on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. has "serious concerns" about the announced outcome.
Blinken said the U.S. feared the result did not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people and called for election officials to immediately release the full results. He also said the U.S. and the international community would respond accordingly.
Later on Monday, State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel echoed Blinken: "We have serious concerns that this result does not reflect the will and the votes of the Venezuelan people."
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Several leaders from across the region were quick to condemn the result. Reuters reported that Argentinean President Javier Milei said, "Not even [Maduro] believes the electoral scam he is celebrating, neither does the Argentine Republic. We do not recognize fraud, we call on the international community to unite to restore the rule of law in Venezuela, and we remind the Venezuelan people that the doors of our country are open to every man who chooses to live in freedom."
Panama's new president, Jose Raul Mulino wrote, "We are putting diplomatic relations on hold until a complete review of the voting records and of the voting computer system is carried out."
Reuters also reported that El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said, "What we saw yesterday in Venezuela has no other name than fraud. An 'election' where the official result has no relation to reality. Something obvious to anyone."
Opposition representatives in Venezuela said tallies they collected from campaign representatives at 30% of voting centers in the country showed González defeating the president. Reports of sporadic anti-Maduro protests broke out in parts of Caracas and other areas of the country as thousands protested the results.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
