Today Venezuelans go to the polls to “decide” if Hugo Chavez will become a long-term dictator. The Venezuelan blogosphere is, understandably, very busy. Daniel at Venezuela News and Views reports an unusual situation:
Back from voting. It was a breeze. But it was also a mystery: my table had no line whatsoever but all the other tables had at least a couple of dozen people waiting and more outside as people were allowed in only as their voting table cleared up some. I was allowed to walk right in.
I did drive around some, visiting about a dozen voting centers, including two in very chavista areas. No lines anywhere. No way to judge abstention so far. My voting book had only two signatures when I voted, I was the third one to sign. This time it had only 10 names per page (I think). I sort of hung around trying to glance at other pages and none had more than 2 to 4 lines filled up. Thus there are plenty of people to vote as obviously more than half the people have not moved there. And I vote in one of the most anti Chavez district of San Felipe.
Doesn’t sound promising. Caracas Chronicles has the latest polls, but even polls in the U.S. are unreliable. The clear lead is “No”, as Francisco notes.
Lets review the bidding here:
- The “No” has had an underlying lead among all poll respondents all along.
- It’s now been three months since a survey not paid for by the government gave the Sí option a clear lead among likely voters.
- Out of the nine nationwide surveys carried out in November,
- Six give the No a clear lead
- Two say it’s “too close to call”
- One gives the Sí a clear lead.
- The one November poll that gives Sí a clear lead is by a fly-by-night firm that may or may not be a Chávez sockpuppet.
He disagrees that the polls are neck-and-neck.
Michelle has more coverage. I’ll have more later today.
by Stephan Tawney on Sun, Dec 2, 2007