President Hugo Chavez's governing party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), got mixed results in the regional and local elections held on November 23, winning strongly in 17 out of 23 states, but losing the country's two most populous states and the Capital District of Caracas.
The PSUV lost the governorships of the two most populous states, Miranda and Zulia, and the mayor's office of greater Caracas, which will be a significant blow to Chavez and his movement.
Perhaps the greatest surprise was the upset victory, with 52.45% of the vote, of opposition leader Antonio Ledezma, of the Brave People's Alliance, in greater Caracas. Ledezma once was governor of the city, from 1992 to 1995, when it was an appointed office.
He was then elected as mayor of the city's main municipality of Libertador in 1995. Ledezma is considered to be an integral part of the country's old political guard, given his ties to former President Carlos Andres Perez.
His challenger this time around was Aristobulo Isturiz, also a former mayor of Libertador, and former education minister for Chavez.
Isturiz is one of the few Afro-Venezuelan politicians of Venezuela with national name-recognition.
The other upset victory is in the state of Miranda, one of the country's most populous and wealthiest states, where Henrique Capriles Radonski won with 52.56% of the vote, against Diosdado Cabello, the incumbent governor and Chavista powerbroker.
Capriles was able to win on the basis of his success as mayor of the upper class Caracas municipality of Baruta, against Cabello's relatively poor performance in Miranda.
The third key opposition victory was in Zulia, where Pablo Perez, the right-hand man of current governor and opposition leader Manuel Rosales, beat the PSUV's GianCarlo DiMartino 53.6% to 45.0%. Z
ulia is another relatively wealthy state with some of the country's main oil deposits and the largest population.
Another opposition win was in the state of Nueva Esparta, which is mainly the tourist island of Margarita, and which was generally an expected opposition victory.
The opposition also won extremely close races in Tachira, on the Colombian border, and the industrial state of Carabobo.
The 17 states where Chavez's candidates won, they managed to do so often by beating both the opposition candidates and dissident Chavez supporters. For example, PSUV candidate and former communications minister William Lara beat, with 52.1% of the vote, Lenny Manuitt, the daughter of the former pro-Chavez governor in Guarico state.
Another important race that Chavez's party lost was in the eastern Caracas municipality of Sucre, which is mostly poor and lower middle class.
Opposition candidate Carlos Ocariz won there with 55.7% of the vote against Jesse Chacon, a former minister who at varying times held the portfolios of communications and information, interior and justice, and of telecommunications.
The opposition now controls four out of Caracas's five municipalities, plus the Greater Caracas mayor's office. Previously it controlled only the three wealthiest municipalities of Chacao, Baruta, and El Hatillo.
The city's largest and poorest municipality, Libertador, was won by former Vice-President Jorge Rodriguez, though, and thus remains in control by a Chavez supporter.
In total, Chavez's party won 17 out of the 22 states in which governors were elected and obtained about 5.4 million votes in these contests, which would be about 57% of the total vote. In the 2004 regional elections Chavez's candidates won in 20 out of the 22 gubernatorial contests.
However, in the year or two before this election, governors in three of these states (in Aragua, Guarico, and Sucre states) switched over to the opposition.
Meanwhile, of the five states the opposition won, four represented a switch from PSUV control to opposition control (Miranda, Tachira, Carabobo, and Greater Caracas), while in two the opposition maintained its control (Zulia and Nueva Esparta).
The process
Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE) president Tibisay Lucena announced that participation had reached an unprecedented high for a regional vote, at 65.45%. More than 17 million voters were registered, which is several million more than in the last such election four years ago.
As a result, lines tended to be long and many polling places had to remain open far longer than the official closing time of 4pm.
While it was aimed to have voting centres closed by 4pm, Lucena explained that they would remain open as long as there were voters in waiting in line to vote.
Some opposition leaders, including Julio Borges from Justice First party, Henry Ramos from Democratic Action and Ismael Garcia from We Can, denounced the extension of voting hours and threatened not to recognize the results.
By 9pm, according to the chief of the Strategic Operational Command (CEO) General Jesus Gonzalez, more than 50 people had been arrested and 106 detained for various electoral crimes.
Other than that, voting was considered to have proceeded very normally and calmly.
Gonzalez said the vast majority of the crimes were destruction of electoral material, and for distributing political pamphlets.
In the state of Anzoategui a group of people on motorbikes removed two rifles from militia acting as part of Plan Republic, aimed at protecting the voting center.
Chavez congratulates nation
In a late-night address to the nation, Chavez congratulated the Venezuelan people for having participated in the electoral event in a "civic and joyful" manner.
The event "ratifies" Venezuelan democracy, but not like the "democracy of before" his election to the presidency, which "belonged to the elites", said Chavez.
Chavez also conceded defeat in the state of Miranda and of the capital district, asking, "Who can say that there is a dictatorship in Venezuela? Well, perhaps some will continue to say so."
However, he highlighted that of the 17 governorships his party had won, eight of these it won with about 60% of the vote and the others with about 10% difference to the closest rival.
Also, his party garnered about six million votes, which represents a significant development for the only recently formed PSUV.
This result for the PSUV compares to the approximately four million votes the opposition obtained, according to PSUV vice-president Alberto Muller Rojas, and thus maintains the ratio of previous elections (except last year's constitutional reform referendum, which the pro-Chavez forces barely lost 51-49), of more or less 60-40 in favor of Chavez's Bolivarian movement.
For Chavez, "The construction of socialism in Venezuela is ratified and now we will now take charge of deepening it."
Official results
State governorships:
Anzoategui
Tarek William Saab (PSUV) 55.06%
Gustavo Marcano 40.50%
Apure
Jesus Aguilarte (PSUV) 56.48%
Miriam de Montilla 26.54%
Aragua
Rafael Isea (PSUV) 58.56%
Henry Rosales 40.17%
Barinas
Adan Chavez (PSUV) 49.63%
Julio Cesar Reyes 44.58%
Bolivar
Francisco Rangel (PSUV) 46.97%
Andres Velasquez 30.47%
Guarico
Willian Lara (PSUV) 52.08%
Lenny Manuitt 33.68%
Lara
Henri Falcon (PSUV) 73,15%
Pedro Alcantara 14,85%
Merida
Marcos Diaz (PSUV) 54.62%
Williams Davila 45.11%
Miranda
Henrique Capriles Radonsky 52.56 %
Diosdado Cabello (PSUV) 36.74%
Sucre
Enrique Maestre (PSUV) 56.08%
Eduardo Morales 42.62%
Vargas
Jorge Garcia Carneiro (PSUV) 61.56%
Roberto Smith 32.18%
Zulia
Pablo Perez 53.59%
Gian Carlo Di Martino (PSUV) 45.02%
Falcon
Stella Lugo (PSUV) 55.27 %
Gregorio Graterol 44.49%
Monagas
Jose Briceno (PSUV) 64.79%
Domingo Urbina 15.41 %
Nueva Esparta
Morel Rodriguez: 57,64
William Farinas (PSUV): 41,69%
Portuguesa
Wilmar Castro Soteldo (PSUV) 57%
Jovito Villegas 27.28%
Trujillo
Hugo Cesar Cabezas (PSUV) 59.47%
Henrique Catalan 27%
City Mayors:
Capital District of Caracas
Antonio Ledezma 52.45%
Aristobulo Isturiz (PSUV) 44.92%
Libertador Municipality of Caracas
Jorge Rodriguez (PSUV) 53.05%
Ivan Stalin Gonzalez 41.92%