Chavez poised for victory
Two polls point to president's win in referendum
Enrique Andres Pretel, Reuters
Published: Sunday, February 15, 2009
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez held a slim lead in opinion polls ahead of today's referendum that would allow him to run for re-election, but many remained undecided how to vote, pollsters said.
The anti-U. S. socialist, who wants to govern for at least another decade in the OPEC nation, has maintained a steady advantage of several points for the past few weeks in his second bid to change the constitution with a referendum.
Two pollsters on Saturday -- Datanalisis, which works for the public and private sector, and Consultores 30.11, which works for the government--gave the Yes vote a lead of between five and seven points. Chavez has been widening his lead slightly since January, the pollsters said.
View Larger ImageMurals Urging Venezuelans To Vote Against, And For, A Constitutional Amendment That Could Keep President Hugo Chavez In Power For Another Decade Blanket Walls In Caracas. Voters Go To The Polls Today.
Both surveys conducted during the final week of the campaign also said more than 10 per cent of Venezuelans who planned to vote still had not made up their minds, making the outcome hard to predict.
"At the end of the campaign, there is a significant consistency in the data from the main Venezuelan pollsters," Datanalisis's Luis Vicente Leon told Reuters. "(But) given that the percentage of undecided voters is bigger than the difference between the Yes and No votes, it is very difficult to project the result."
In 2007,Chavez narrowly lost a referendum on a raft of constitutional changes, including allowing him to run for reelection.
On Saturday, Chavez said he lost in 2007 because of a weak get-out-the-vote effort, which he has now overhauled, making him "infinitely more" confident of victory today.
If he does win, the Cuba ally, who calls capitalism an evil and has nationalized swaths of the economy, can stay in office as long he keeps winning elections. He first won office in 1998 and has vowed to rule for decades.
If he loses today, he should leave office in 2013.But most political analysts expect the ex-soldier, who once sought power in a coup, would seek another way to change the election rules.
The Datanalisis poll showed 45 per cent of survey respondents backed the referendum and 38 per cent opposed it. It surveyed 1,260 voters Feb. 3 to 9 and had a margin of error of 2..7 percentage points.
© The Calgary Herald 2009
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