Half of PSOE voters ask to recognize Edmundo González as president of Venezuela

The data show the loneliness of Pedro Sánchez’s Executive in this matter, in which he has chosen not to take what he describes as a false step, after Juan Guaidó was recognized in 2019 as president in charge of Venezuela, but it was of no use. that movement to overcome the regime of Nicolás Maduro, which remains in power based on repression and opacity. On January 10, when González was called to take office as the winner of the elections – international organizations recognized his victory and the Maduro apparatus has refused to show the minutes of the presidential elections of July 28 of last year -, The Chavista leader renewed his mandate amid strong measures against the opposition, including the arrest – and subsequent release – of the opposition leader María Corina Machado, whom he had already prevented from appearing at the polls.

The clamor for democracy in Venezuela found a response in the Congress of Deputies, which urged the Government to recognize González as president-elect on September 11, and a week later in the Senate, which issued the same mandate to Moncloa. A day later, the European Parliament adopted a resolution also in that sense, but not even that symbolic position changed that of the Government, advised by former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, accused by the opposition of acting as a transmission belt for the Chavista regime. In addition to fifty percent of PSOE voters, 83 percent of PP voters, 81 percent of Vox voters, 42 percent of Sumar voters and 52 percent believe that González’s victory should be accepted. of the nationalists (which includes ERC, Junts, Bildu, PNV, Canarian Coalition, BNG and the CUP, the latter being extra-parliamentary).

In the survey, carried out between January 16 and 23 – just a week after Maduro prevented González from taking office and clinging to power – voters from no political family show a strong rejection of recognition of Gonzalez. Six percent of PP voters do so, twenty percent of PSOE voters, ten percent of Vox voters, 31 percent of Sumar voters and twenty-five percent of nationalists do so; a group where parties like Bildu have closed ranks with the Maduro regime, in a position that has earned them strong criticism from the PNV.

Rejection of the regime

If support for González is the majority in Spanish society, the strong rejection of the figure of Maduro is even more notable. The Government insists today that it must show the electoral records of 28-J – something that not even Zapatero did, who distanced himself from the Puebla Group, a left-wing political forum to which he belongs, which did demand them –, but a 75 percent of those surveyed indicate that the Bolivarian leader lost the elections. Only seven percent of the sample disagrees with this statement, while eighteen percent prefer not to comment on it.

Regarding political parties, Maduro does not even find a respite among the voters of the formations that are closest to his theses, such as Sumar and some of the nationalists. 63 percent of Yolanda Díaz’s voters and the same percentage of nationalists and separatists consider that she lost the presidential elections. A figure that rises among those of the PSOE (72%), the PP (88%) and Vox (89%).

Thirteen percent of those who opted for Sumar’s ballot on July 23, 2023 reject that Maduro lost the elections. A figure that does not reach ten percent in the rest of the political options: nine percent of the socialists, eight percent of the nationalists, five percent of those of Vox and four percent of the popular ones. The general feeling of the population, therefore, does not translate into the official position.