CARACAS, Venezuela — The United States and several Latin American countries cast doubt Monday on President Nicolás Maduro’s reelection on Sunday, ordinary Venezuelans took to the streets and opposition leaders prepared to reveal what some said was evidence of brazen electoral fraud.
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, which Maduro controls, claimed early Monday that the authoritarian socialist earned 51 percent of the vote to Edmundo González’s 44 percent.
On Monday evening, opposition leaders said they had collected more than 73 percent of voting center records, and they proved that González won twice as many votes as Maduro. That was similar to independent exit polling released Sunday evening.
“We have in our hands the tallies that show our triumph, which is categorically and mathematically irreversible,” González told reporters. “Our triumph is historic.”
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Earlier Monday, council President Elvis Amoroso declared Maduro president for another six-year term — suggesting that a recount would not change the outcome announced earlier in the day.
Opposition leaders, who had seen the election as its best chance in more than a decade of defeating Maduro, demanded he hand over scanned printouts of all voting records — more than 30,000 documents — signed and dated by poll workers and opposition observers, and not just the numbers shown on the government webpage.
Biden administration officials and the Atlanta-based Carter Center, which sent a technical observation team to monitor Sunday’s vote, made similar calls.
Opposition leaders, who organized, trained and sent thousands of ordinary citizens to polling places Sunday in anticipation of potential fraud, said they would release the records publicly on Monday night.
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According to their information, opposition leader María Corina Machado said, Maduro’s win was “impossible.”
“We won, and the whole world knows it,” she told reporters.
If the accusations of fraud prove true, it would mark uncharted territory even for a strongman who has been suspected of manipulating or tampering with elections on the margins several times over the past decade.
Maduro has been accused of coercion, manipulation and other tricks to tip the vote a few percentage points in his favor, but never before has he been accused of reversing a gap as large as the opposition is suggesting, according to electronic engineer Mario Torre, who’s auditing the electoral system for the opposition.
“For the first time they dare to give a result that is not the one that the system reflects,” Torre said. “We’re talking about a massive fraud.”
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On Monday afternoon, voters across Venezuela poured into the streets, apparently of their own accord, and notably in working-class neighborhoods that have historically been strongholds of support for Maduro and his late mentor, Hugo Chávez. The protesters banged pots and pans and demanded Maduro step down.
“We don’t agree with the fraud President Maduro committed,” said Marjory Rojas, a 40-year-old housekeeper from a working-class neighborhood in Baruta who was protesting along a highway in Caracas. “I have three children living outside of the country, and he’s saying he won? We want him to leave. It’s not fair what they’re doing to the country.”
Machado, by far Venezuela’s most popular opposition leader, called the protests a legitimate outpouring of frustration against an “illegitimate regime.”
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“Today we are seeing expressions from citizens who are refusing to have their future robbed, to have the truth ignored,” she said. She called on Venezuelan families to gather Tuesday morning in “popular assemblies.”
U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Monday called on Maduro to publish “the full, detailed tabulation of votes.”
“We’re going to withhold judgment until that time … and [then] we will respond accordingly,” he said.
Two senior Biden administration officials said Maduro’s government has all the voting data now and could release it immediately. That data, one said, is “required under Venezuelan law and should be immediately providable.”
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under terms set by the administration, said they had received ample information from multiple sources indicating that the results announced by the electoral council were “at odds with how people actually voted … potentially substantially at odds.”
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The officials declined to detail possible next steps. One said the administration would “continue to assess our sanctions policy” in light of “the action or non-action” taken by the Maduro government and U.S. interests.
But it was unlikely, one said, that the administration would cancel the licenses provided to Chevron and other oil companies allowing them to do business in Venezuela.
Maduro has ruled Venezuela since the death of Chávez, founder of the socialist state, in 2013. Many here blame him for the oil-rich country’s economic collapse and the exodus of millions of citizens, including hundreds of thousands who have fled to the United States.
Some Latin American countries, including Colombia and Brazil, which have friendly ties to Maduro, joined in the skepticism about the announced results, as did Spain, Italy and other European nations.
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Celso Amorim, a top foreign policy adviser to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, one of Maduro’s most important leftist allies, was reserving judgment.
Amorim was visiting the Miraflores presidential palace on Monday afternoon to meet with Maduro. He was also hoping to meet with González before reaching an assessment, according to a diplomatic official who was in Caracas with him, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the talks.
Russia, China, Iran and Cuba congratulated Maduro.
In a memo, the opposition campaign declared the vote a “FRAUD” and said the “burden of proof” was on the government.
“Months will go by and they will not be able to deliver it to us. That is what we have to achieve, demanded by us and by the international community,” the memo’s authors wrote.
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On Monday, Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab said the electoral data transmission system suffered an attempted “attack,” and he accused opposition leaders Lester Toledo and Leopoldo López of carrying it out to “manipulate the data.” He also accused Machado of being involved, providing no evidence.
“What has happened in our country is a huge social movement that they will not stop,” said Machado, Venezuela’s most popular politician. “We are a civic peaceful movement, and that’s how we will keep working until we make the truth prevail — and it will prevail.”
In the run-up to the election, Maduro’s government barred Machado from running, arrested campaign workers and denied the opposition access to state media. During voting on Sunday, there were reports of blocked entry, delays and violence at some voting centers.
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Maduro’s claims threatened to increase his and Venezuela’s isolation on the world stage. His Foreign Ministry said Monday it was withdrawing all of Venezuela’s diplomats from seven Latin American countries, including Argentina, Chile and Peru, and demanding those countries’ governments respond in kind. (Maduro severed diplomatic relations with the United States in 2019.)
Maduro’s government announced it would be suspending flights to and from Panama and the Dominican Republic, accusing both countries of being “interveners.” Both countries serve as important routes into and out of Venezuela from the United States and other countries.
He’s been down this road before. In 2018, he claimed reelection in a vote marred by charges of irregularities, prompting mass protests at home and condemnation abroad.
The United States and other countries declared Maduro illegitimate and recognized then-National Assembly President Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s rightful leader.
In a statement early Monday, Maduro claimed without evidence that the electoral council had been hacked from an unnamed country, causing a delay in the publication of the full election results. “The demons and the devils did not want the total to be counted,” Maduro said.
Latin American leaders across the political spectrum cast doubt on the results.
Luis Gilberto Murillo, foreign minister under leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro, called for an independent verification and audit of the vote count “as soon as possible.”
Center-left Chilean President Gabriel Boric described the official results as “difficult to believe” and demanded that international observers be given access to the full results. “From Chile, we will not recognize any result that is not verifiable,” he wrote on X early Monday.
On the other end of the political spectrum, right-wing Argentine President Javier Milei, too, said he would not recognize a “fraud.” “Venezuelans chose to end the communist dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro,” he posted on X. He called on Venezuela’s armed forces to “defend democracy and the popular will.”
Peruvian Foreign Minister Javier González-Olaechea accused Maduro’s regime of having the “intention of fraud” and recalled Peru’s ambassador to Venezuela for consultations. “Peru will not accept the violation of the popular will of the Venezuelan people,” he said on X.
Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay also issued calls for a transparent count of the votes by independent observers.
Meanwhile, Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Bolivia and Honduras — all allies of Maduro — congratulated him.
The Russian ambassador to Caracas described the victory as “credible,” and President Vladimir Putin sent his best wishes. “Remember that you are always a welcome guest on Russian soil,” he told Maduro.
China’s Foreign Ministry congratulated Maduro and Venezuela on their “successful” election. “China and Venezuela are good friends and partners who support each other,” spokesman Lin Jian told reporters, according to state media.
Cuba’s Raúl Castro, the younger brother of the late Fidel Castro and a former premier of the communist island nation himself, called Maduro to congratulate him, Cuba’s Foreign Ministry said.
Sands reported from London. Abigail Hauslohner in Washington, Christian Shepherd in Taipei, Taiwan, and Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report.
