Disjointed Morning-After Thoughts

Quico says: I detest more-than-one-topic-per-post posts, but I'm too frazzled and sleep deprived to do better:

1. Los tres cochinitos
Meet the new leaders of the opposition. These three. Ledezma, Ocariz and Capriles: three big wins in Caracas area districts with lots of poor people. Unfair as it is, the other oppo winners from last night have a built in handicap: they just live too darn far away from the big TV studios and news rooms. So these three now become the visible heads of the opposition, the de facto leadership.

They'll have to cooperate. But don't kid yourselves, they'll also be competing. If you've ever seen The Weakest Link, you know the drill: making nice along the way may be necessary, but if you want the big prize, you just gotta knife the other guy in the back at the end. It's nothing personal. Business...just business.

So, which of these three would you rather see end up with the ring? For me, it's an absolute no-brainer...

2. It's the Parapara problem, stupid...
The standard journalistic frame about Venezuela, for the longest time, has been rich vs. poor. What last night suggests is that that's an increasingly outmoded frame. It's not rich vs. poor, it's urban vs. rural. The opposition can compete in poor urban areas. It's in the countryside where we got served again and again and again.

The Parapara Problem is still kicking our butts. In recent years, we've barely ever heard opposition figures pose the problem in City v. Country terms. The oppo leadership hasn't even seemed aware that it had a problem in the countryside. Last night's results are so stark, the urban/rural divide so obvious, you'd hope they'd realize they just can't compete nationally without a rural message and a rural organization.

Then again, our Top Leaders are now all confirmed city slickers, people who wouldn't know how to plant a yuca if their lives depended on it.

Who will lead the big oppo rural revival?! We'd hoped for Julio Cesar Reyes...it just didn't pan out.

3. Next year
2009 will be the first year since 2003 without a National Vote. (Unless Chávez manufactures one somehow...)

4. It's the oil cycle, stupid...
Last night may be remembered as the last election of the Chávez Oil Bonanza. Venezuelan oil prices ended last week just a smidgen above $40/bbl. That shock hasn't really fed through to the real economy yet. Oil markets - like all markets - are inherently unpredictable, but there's a reasonable chance that last night was Chávez's last go at High Oil Electioneering. And there's just no way to make the maths work to avoid a deep adjustment before 2010 if oil prices don't recover soon.

In Venezuela, it's foolish to interpret any election result without placing it in the context of the oil cycle: it's not that the opposition won 5 big urban states + Caracas last night, it's that we won 5 big urban states + Caracas in the boom part of the oil cycle.

5. Unity Über Alles
On this blog, we were fairly dismissive about the opposition's fixation with unity during this cycle, interpreting it as one part sound electoral tactics, two parts panicky squalid hysteria.

In the end splits really did cost us in Bolívar, Barinas and imaginably in some other places like Anzoátegui and Libertador, where we might have poached more votes from the other side if we hadn't been so disunited. The only place where Chavismo paid the price for their splits was Carabobo.

6. Who needs LL?
Juan Cristobal is a blogging GOD for starting to believe in Ledezma's chances before anyone else. (And, I gotta wonder, did Cadena-gate cost Aristóbulo?!)

7. Cosmic Payback
In a small, cosmic way, I feel that forcing Jorge Rodríguez to sit through weekly meetings flanked by Antonio Ledezma, Emilio Grateron, Gerardo Blyde, Carlos Ocariz and Miriam do Nascimento will be some tiny measure of payback for the sheer hell the man put us through back in 2003 and 2004.

8. All that is solid melts into air
What the hell happened in Sucre State?!

9. Who's afraid of the big bad turnout?
Last year, the chavista line was that they lost because turnout was down to 55%. Last night, turnout hit an unprecedentedly high (for a regional election) 65%, truly remarkable...and we still held our own.

10. The final map

Caution: Red objects on this map are smaller than they appear.

First Official Bulletín: Caracas es Caracas y el resto es monte, culebra y chavistas (with noted exceptions)

Quico says: The first official results are in. The opposition lost all the toss-ups except the one that mattered: the Metropolitan Mayor's Office in Caracas.

When all is said and done, we'll have 5 governorships, including the three most populous, as well as Metro Caracas. We still can't win anywhere rural, though.

I'm thrilled about the results in Caracas - especially Petare, where Carlos Ocariz is set to win big. But I'm desperately heartbroken about Barinas. We came so close...so close...

First Results

Quico says: We can now confirm three opposition wins:

• Pablo Perez has been elected Governor of Zulia
• Henrique Salas Feo has been elected Governor of Carabobo
• Morel Rodriguez has been re-elected Governor of Nueva Esparta

Not exactly earth-shattering news, we realize, but this is what we can say for sure at this point. We're trying to confirm other races.

It looks pretty good, but it'll be a long night.

Chigüire Forever!

Chigüire says: Any minute now we could get a bulletin with the final results from the December 2, 2007 referendum.

Plan República: Magical Realism Edition

Quico says: UnionRadio just reported that a bunch of hoods actually held up a voting center in Anzoátegui today, overpowered the Plan República soldiers, and stole two army rifles! Plop!

Super secret confidential inside info:

Quico says: I got nothin'...

Chutzpah Chronicles

Quico says: Muller Rojas denounces that the opposition is offering cash to people waiting in line to vote to go home!

Update: Teodoro says Muller Rojas sounded like he's been drinking. (Election night is so much fun!)

The Nerviest Hour

Quico says: Every election cycle, it's the same thing. The polls close. But results don't come out for another 3 or 4 hours. In the interim, we collectively go insane.

It's hit Borges. Ramos Allup too. They're peddling some weird theory about some strange fraud involving keeping voting centers open beyond the official closing time. How that works is anybody's guess.

It's hard to keep your head during the nerviest hour. The wait feels endless. Por dios.

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

Update: Teodoro Petkoff tries to de-dramatize Borges's statement.

What's at stake in Barinas

Quico says: El País of Spain is the only paper to have done some in depth reporting on the race for governor in Barinas. If you can read Spanish, don't miss it: terrific stuff.

"They have nine mansions in Barinas in their names, which they recognize. On top of that they've bought ranches, where they've built even basketball courts. The Chávezes hate me for making this public, but that hatred is reciprocated."

Wilmer Azuaje says the Chávezes are the biggest latifundists and capitalists in Barinas. He says old man Chávez used to own, in a town half an hour by car from the city called Camirí, a little farm called La Chavera, about 30 hectares before he became governor. "Now that little farm is 600 hectares" [about 600 football fields]. A bit frther on, by Isla de la Fantasía river, another member of the Chávez family has La Martinera, a 300 hectare ranch with a basketball court. Nacho also has another one in Santa Lucia, 700 hectares. One of Chávez's nephews has another scandalous farm. But the biggest one of them all belongs to Argenis, La Malagueña, which is registered to Nestor Izarra, a longtime family employee, and comes in at no less than 2000 hectares.

[Hat tip: Kep.]

Yet More Gossip: Street Money Edition

Quico says: PSUV offered its activists payments ranging from BsF. 2,000 to BsF. 4,000 ($900-1800 at the official exchange rate) to work on the campaign. The deal is half-cash, half Cestatickets. Plus Chávez has been promising prize trips to Cuba for the best campaign workers.

Desperation to mobilize folks? Maybe...but still, it's a measure of how brutally outspent we're getting. I mean, if the opposition had the possibility to offer those kinds of incentives to its rank-and-file, you can bet they'd jump on 'em.

(I really feel bad to have to keep my sources secret here, but some things are said in confidence and, well...you understand.)

Resignifying the Porkchop

Quico says: A tiny observation: isn't it funny how the word "chuleta" (meaning cheat-sheet - but literally, porkchop) has been resignified over the last few days?

When I was a kid, a chuleta was, by definition, naughty: the thing you weren't supposed to bring with you to a test. But since CNE declared that it's ok to bring a cheat-sheet with you when you come to vote, I keep hearing all these people-in-authority reminding folks again and again to bring their chuletas...

This is a minor concession to sanity: the voting process today is mind-numbingly complicated. People in Petare, for instance, are expected to vote ten times (mayor, metropolitan mayor, and various numbers of votes for municipal council, state assembly and metropolitan city council) and the number of candidates and parties on the ballot is downright dizzying. Still, there's something weird about hearing, say, Julio Borges telling people again and again how important it is to, in a way, cheat!

(Of course, chigüire just did some resignifying of his own...)

Why Today Matters

Quico says: The funny thing is that today's elections matter almost entirely on a symbolic level. What we're seeing today is the latest installment in the decade-long psychodrama that has been the Chávez era.

With small and shrinking responsibilities and budgets, no tax-raising powers and levels of autonomy that ressemble that of US counties more than US states, Venezuelan governors and mayors can't really alter the political life of the country in any material sense. Least of all now, when the crash in oil prices (and, consequently in situado transfers) will make, to paraphrase an old cliché, "the winners envy the losers."

What's at stake here is something different: the political content of venezolanidad. For a decade, Chávez has been trying to sell us this story where the only Real Venezuelan (sound familiar to anyone?) is a chavista, that voting for the opposition is somehow un-venezuelan, even treasonous. Today, with any luck, the good burghers of Petare, Barinas, Trujillo, etc. will start to put the lie to this brand of emotional-blackmail-cum-political-discourse.

Chávez Cries Fraud!

Quico says: Bonkers but true: Adan Chávez claims when his dad (a.k.a. Governor Chávez) voted in Barinas, the machine printed out a ballot voucher that didn't match the name of the person he had just voted for!

Imagine This?

Rafael (from the comments section) says: With all this talk about how this time Chavez has a lot to lose, not much mention has been made of what happens if we end up with Sucre, Nueva Esparta and nothing else...

That would be a complete reversal of any momentum from last december, and a return to the wilderness from which we may not be able to recover in a long time. That would leave the door open for the approval of the indefinite reelection, and being out of any important regional office for a few more years may make people thing that the only legitimate office pretenders have to be chavistas. The only reason Rosales and his bunch are competitive right now is because they have been there recently, not because of any other particular talent or quality.

I have a bad feeling about this one, we should be much further ahead.

Quico ads: I want to be clear. This is not the most likely scenario. As of one week ago, polling still showed us narrowly ahead in Carabobo, Zulia, Táchira, Trujillo, and Guarico, with Miranda and Barinas basically tied and Cojedes within reach. This here is the worst-case scenario, what would happen if PSUV got a boost in the last week of the campaign and then beat the hell out of us at the turnout game. We're in possible-but-not-likely land here.

The Lee Atwater Awards: Valencia Edition

Quico says: Another bit of polling gossip: support for the incumbent, dissident chavista Governor of Carabobo, Luis Felipe Acosta Carlez (a.k.a., Cap'n Burp), has apparently completely collapsed in the wake of the arrest of his buddy, Valencia mayoral candidate Abdalá Makled.

Along with Chávez's repeated visits, this is turning Carabobo into a two-horse race, with the chavista vote congealing around the execrable Chávez sycophant/attack dog Mario Silva. The three-way dynamic that had been such a boon to oppo candidate Henrique Salas Feo is no more, giving way to a still-unlikely-but-increasingly-imaginable upset by PSUV.

If the government pulls this off, whomever thought up the genius plan to set up Makled's brother for drug trafficking just day's before the election deserves the Lee Atwater Award for Machiavellianism and Dirty Trickery.

(Incidentally, chigüire is on fire this weekend.)

Where are they now? Election edition (+ Bonus rant)

Quico says: Ever wonder what ever happened to Luis Alfonso Dávila, the Miquilenista former chairman of the National Assembly and Interior Minister? Or to Pedro Soto, Air Force captain who set off that string of anti-Chávez pronouncements by active duty officers back in 2002? Or to David de Lima, former governor of Anzoátegui? Or to Rogelio Peña, former Adeco mayor of Barinas and star of my documentary on the Lands' Law?

You guessed it: they're all running no-hope campaigns for governor - of Anzoátegui, Aragua, Anzoátegui and Barinas, respectively.

Bonus rant: Why oh why do so many politicos in Venezuela go to the trouble of running for offices they haven't the slightest sliver of a chance of winning...what's the point?! What good does it do anyone!?

There are eleven candidates for governor in Táchira! In Vargas, things are so out of hand they need two tarjetones to fit in the thirteen candidates for governor! It's insane, most of these people wouldn't get recognized by their neighbors walking down the street.

That's why Venezuelan ballots sprawl so absurdly out of control...seriously, look at that Distrito Metropolitano ballot...you don't need a chuleta to make sense of that, you need an atamel.

And another thing...what's with all these tiny parties? Dozens and dozens of them...springing up like mushrooms after spring rain, they turn the simple act of voting into a baffling ordeal.

Sure, there's the unburied dead...the MEPs and Causa Rs and URDs and MASs of this world...parties well past their sell-by dates that have petered out to insignificance without quite vanishing altogether.

But that's not the worst of it...what I want to know is, on what ontological plane does "Vision Venezuela" exist? Or "Poder Laboral"?! Or "Vanguardia Popular"? How about "Guardianes de la Patria" (some of these have terrifying, Minutemen-sounding names)? Or - I swear I'm not making this up - the "Partido Auténtico Nacional - PANA"? Do these parties hold weekly CEN meetings? Do they have CENs!? If you put their entire membership in a VW Beetle, would you have room left over for your girlfriend and her dog? And, most pressing of all, why don't they get a life?!


In England, they have a simple but effective way to deal with this problem. If you want to appear on the ballot, you have to pay a 500 pound deposit. If you get more than 5% of the vote, that money is returned. If you don't, you lose it.

It's a clever system, when you think about it: giving everyone ballot access while at the same time penalizing la mamadera de gallo. It's even worked its way into the British political vernacular, where "losing your deposit" has become shorthand for an utter electoral drubbing.

The upshot is that British ballots are blissfully free of loonies and no-hopers (well, mostly free). Unlike with our ballots, you can actually make sense of a British ballot just by glancing at it...even if you don't have a double Ph.D in Political Science and Graphic Design!

See? Simple.

A deposit system...would that be so hard? Would it be too high a price to pay for ballots that normal people can make sense of? Would it?

Frontline on Aló Presidente: Simply Brilliant

Quico says: Frontline, PBS's flagship current affairs show, has just released a documentary on el que te conté on its website. They're calling it The Hugo Chávez Show, and it's as close to The Whole Story on Chávez in 90 minutes as you're ever likely to get.

Watch it. No, seriously, watch it. The production values are top-notch, and the analysis is on a level of sophistication well beyond what we're used to seeing in foreign outlets.

This segment in particular, which methodically takes apart the way Chávez brutalizes his own ministers and supporters on Aló, presidente, includes some of the most insightful stuff yet on the way the man actually exercises power. The basic insight/paradox, that opposition supporters enjoy far more freedom of speech in Venezuela than government backers, is brilliantly shown, not told.

Don't miss it.

The Spanish version está aquí.

[Hat tip to like 15 or 20 of you who've been bombarding my inbox with links to this thing...]

Chigüire Strikes Again

Quico says: Barreto reveals revolutionary plans for a sub-aquatic Caracas.

Could Chávez's Cadena Blunder Rescue the Opposition in Caracas?

Panel one: "Not sure whether to go vote or not..."
Panel three: Cadena announcement... "It's decided...I'm going to vote!"

Venezuela: "I could use a little help over here!"
Chávez: "Quit bugging me, I'm on cadena."

Quico says: Looking at editorial cartoons like these, I have to wonder if Chávez's idiot decision to run an hours' long cadena in the middle of a natural disaster might not provide the kind of lifeline opposition hopeful Antonio Ledezma needed to pull off a dramatic, come-from-behind win in the race for Metropolitan Mayor of Caracas.

I mean, that cadena was a disaster. Commandeering the airwaves, all the airwaves, for an unrelated rant, at a time when people needed up-to-the-minute information as a matter of life or death...that just crystallizes everything that's gone wrong with the revolutionary dream.

Chávez se olvidó del pueblo!

The guy's off doing his own thing. Your problems just don't rank all that high in his list of concerns, not even when they're something quite as dire, quite as immediate, as needing to know whether you're about to get washed away by a flash flood in the next few seconds.

That cadena was Fat Man in a Palace Syndrome made visible in its starkest, most dramatic terms. I refuse to believe chavismo won't take an electoral hit for it.

Will it be enough? As recently as a week ago, Ledezma was pretty far behind. Veremos.

Polling gossip: Pessimist's Edition

Quico says: A trusted reader with access to polling data I could only dream of writes in. Our forecast map looks optimistic to him. Says only Sucre and Nueva Esparta are genuine Deep Blues. Zulia, tightening. Táchira, tightening. Carabobo, tightening. Miranda, dead even. Aragua, Anzoátegui, Bolívar, Vargas, Yaracuy and Caracas-at-Large: all well out of reach.

In states where we're behind, we're way behind. In states where we're ahead, we're barely ahead. The one bright spot: Trujillo, where the dissident chavista has a better shot at upsetting PSUV than most realize.

Life Immitates Satire

Quico says: Yesterday's scenes of traffic madness in Caracas reminded me of a classic Otrova Gomas piece called "El Día D." It originally showed up in El Cofre de los Reconcomios - a collection of wonderfully bizarre and extremely funny essays he first published (if you can believe this) all the way back in 1979.

It takes some local knowledge to fully appreciate the genius of this piece, for sure. But even if you've only been to Caracas once or twice you can intuit how the city's location along a long, narrow valley makes this scenario chillingly plausible.

Of course, the original Spanish (which I'll post in the comments,) is way funnier than my translation. Still, here goes nothing:

D-Day
by Otrova Gomas

A couple of days earlier, I had the feeling that the traffic reports on the radio were showing uncommon concern. I seem to remember one of the chopper guys saying he'd never seen so many cars in one place. But really, it all happened on February 24th.

At 9 a.m., the massive traffic jam from Caricuao bumped up into the one from Altamira, while the tailback on Plaza Venezuela practically cut off the flow of cars from the University, whose drivers got desperate and started trying to flee towards the highway via downtown. That might have worked, except the tailback from Universidad Avenue had blocked the highway in both directions.

A number of desperate drivers then struck off for the Norte-Sur, but the congestion on Nueva Granada Avenue, caused by the gridlock in El Paraiso produced by the cars that were fleeing the jam in Caricuao, ended up blocking every route into and out of Central Caracas.

At 10:30, after a truck overturned on the way into the La Guaira highway tunnel, a rubberneckers' crash on the way up into Caracas shut down traffic between the city and the coast forever. We have to acknowledge that people, driven crazy by the hot sun beating down on them, ended up making everything worse by clogging the breakdown lane as they tried to turn around and head back, making it impossible for tow-trucks to reach the scene and try to patch things up somehow.

Meanwhile, back in Caracas, the cars coming from the Cota Mil got boxed in on the eastern end because gridlock on the East-side highway had set off an unprecedented jam on the Francisco de Miranda Avenue, which in turn got blocked on the west by the traffic jams from Chacaito, la Libertador and the end of Casanova Avenue, and to the east by the collapse of the Altamira overpass (que tiempos aquellos!), which buckled under the weight of the cars stranded on it.

I remember that the Prados del Este Highway, crammed full of desperate drivers, ended up gridlocked from Chacao to the Prados del Este roundabout, where furious drivers tried to turn back without realizing that they would end up locked into a circle formed by the cars that were trying to escape through Alto Hatillo from the jams in El Cafetal and Chuao as well as the desperados fleeing Baruta.

At 11:00 a.m., with the entire city clogged and becoming a bedlam of cars trying to turn back, it started to rain. When Catia flooded, traffic on Urdaneta Avenue shut down completely, setting off panic in San Bernardino, San José and La Pastora. Crazed drivers tried to get out by driving on the sidewalks and traffic isles, even if it meant mowing down trees, but the deep puddles that started to form all over the city closed down every escape route.

By 3:30 p.m., the city of Caracas was completely gridlocked without the slightest possibility of movement anywhere. To make matters worse, a bus accident in Tazón shut off passage through the mountains to the South, after the tailback from the Valle-Coche highway ran into the one from the East-side highway.

At first, traffic wardens and motorcyclists tried to help out in emergency cases, but the desperation of people trying to flee through any gap, even if it meant driving over smaller cars, formed an automotive barricade over every nook and cranny that made it impossible even for bikes to get through.

At 4:55, the bikes were abandoned just like hundreds of cars had been. The army overflew the city and the president improvised a cadena from the jam in La Carlota, calling for calm and promising to work things out somehow. But the suppressed sobs in his voice made it impossible to believe him. There was no hope.

Foreign experts declared it impossible to get traffic moving again, explaining that the streets had morphed into one immense traffic jam that circled back on itself again and again like a snake. The only chance to get any movement, according to a Ministry of Transport communiqué, would involve getting 50,000 cars to reverse at the same time, but that would inevitably just mean replicating the jam backwards.

Worst of all was the irresponsible attitude of thousands of drivers who, at 3 in the morning, abandoned their cars. Some even locked the doors to make sure they didn't get stolen.

It was the worst night in memory. The honking horns of idiots, the carbon monoxide, the smoke, the gasoline vapors and the high lead concentrations caused the first fatalities towards 5 in the morning.

Within two days, the exodus started. Still not quite able to believe the official declaration that it was impossible to move that inferno of cars, people started to abandon the city. The absence of supplies turned it into a dead city almost overnight.

Millions of people began the greatest migration in the history of time, taking nothing more than what they could carry in their arms.

Within six days, the city was completely abandoned. It had become the exclusive preserve of hundreds of thousands of vehicles forming a horrific queue of luxury junk. A ghost city populated only by a handful of very patient and extremely inattentive drivers who, never noticing the exodus, waited patiently for traffic to get going.

(Read the original in the comments.)

Thinking through the Major Mayor's race

Juan Cristobal says: A lot of you have asked about the Caracas Mayor-at-Large (or Major Mayor) race between Chavez's candidate Aristobulo Isturiz and opposition candidate Antonio Ledezma. The race is not just one of the most symbolically important ones that will be held on Sunday, it's also a toss-up: one to watch very closely (assuming the rains don't just wash away the whole valley which, at this point, is a toss up too.)

In the last election in 2004, the good people of the Metro area elected Juan Barreto over Claudio Fermin by a margin of 60-40. This went down in the midst of dismally low turnout by our voters, right on the heels of the Great Recall Referendum Debacle of 2004.

Barreto got most of his votes from the Libertador side of the city. Chavista votes in Libertador accounted for 73% of his total. The opposition votes came from all over - 29% of the votes for Claudio Fermin came from Baruta, 17% from Sucre, 10% from Chacao and 6 % from El Hatillo. But still, 37% of his votes came from Libertador.

So in order for Ledezma to win, two things must happen: there has to be a significant increase in opposition turnout in our strongholds of Baruta and Chacao, a surge of opposition votes in Sucre, and a competitive fight in Libertador that blunts Aristóbulo's advantage there. In other words, people in our strongholds need to turn out big, and the predictable chavista victory in its stronghold should be less than overwhelming.

Several facts suggest the wind is blowing in Ledezma's favor. Though he is the one oppo politico Quico loves to hate more than any other, he has run a disciplined campaign, and deserves kudos for getting Leopoldo Lopez's full endorsement.

The competitive race in Chacao may increase turnout if people feel strongly about one candidate or the other. Furthermore, Ocariz may be riding a wave of support in Sucre that could translate nicely into a bigger margin for Ledezma.

Finally, in Libertador, the opposition is running two competitive candidates: student leader Stalin Gonzalez and Claudio Fermin. Neither of them has a chance against Jorge Rodriguez, but this two-sided attack may steal enough votes from Rodriguez from both older, more traditional adeco voters and younger voters identified with the student movement, that it may well push Ledezma over the finish line. If instead of Freddy Bernal's 74% win in 2004 over Carlos Melo, Jorge Rodriguez were to win with, say 50% of the vote, Ledezma could squeak through.

In other words, running several candidates in both Chacao and Libertador could end up benefitting the opposition!

It's the oldest cliché in the book, but true nonetheless: it's all down to turnout. Now with the rains, who knows. In this clip, Ledezma is sounding like the Mayor already.

Panic on the Streets of El Rosal

Quico says: A day of chaos in Caracas yesterday, as uninterrupted, torrential rain caused deadly mudslides and absolute traffic chaos all over the city. Mudslides wiped out at least 30 houses (a euphemism, really they mean shanties) in Baruta (Southeastern Caracas). In Libertador (Central Caracas), 170 houses were destroyed. Five people died in Caracas, including two children. Two more died in floods in Zulia.

As an urban system, Caracas just stops functioning when it rains this hard. Yesterday saw a kind of systemic city-wide traffic collapse. (Erm...more so than usual, is what I mean.) Caracas's open-sewer-cum-river, the Guaire, looked set to burst its banks...literally covering El Rosal with shit. The Prados del Este and Valle-Coche Highways simply stopped moving, with water and mud waist high in places and people reduced to sleeping in their cars. Spotting an opportunity, gangs of muggers made their way through the cola, holding up stranded motorists at will. Mad Max stuff.

Amid all this, at around 4:00 p.m., Chávez called a cadena broadcast, linking up all terrestrial TV and radio. "Good," you think, "the Big Man is taking this weather bull by the horns!"

Not a bit of it...it was just a standard, ranting, ideology-heavy cadena, this time to welcome the Vietnamese president and sing the praises of Ho Chi Minh.

His one mention of the weather? A wistful complaint that all that rain would mess with the satellite link-up to the site of a planned Vietnovenezuelan low-energy light-bulb factory in Falcón State - which was to be the highlight of the cadena. The sheer chaos all around him? Bien gracias...lets just say it wasn't just those light-bulbs operating at suspiciously low wattage yesterday.

For once, Leopoldo Castillo's incensed rant at the end of the cadena made good sense to me:

Fat Man in a Palace Syndrome is never quite so stomach turning as when people really do need their government to help them as a matter of life or death. In the normal run of affairs, Chávez's galactic level of isolation is merely funny, in a sad sort of way. But when the flood waters are rising all around you, it's not funny. Not funny at all.

So there you have it...more and more rain, pouring down and taxing the country's emergency response services just hours before an important vote, and the government utterly focused on the election rather than on sorting out the growing chaos engulfing the city...remind you of anything?

Update: Apparently the Guaire did finally burst its banks in some places. Some reports now talk of 11 deaths from the floods. Traffic in Caracas is still not back to normal. And the forecast calls for more rain today and tomorrow.

Two more 23N maps

Quico says: The pre-election forecasts are coming thick and fast now, and just to keep the people who make them accountable after the election, we're going to keep posting them.

Opposition-linked pollster Oscar Schemel of Hinterlaces has a map that's not miles away from our own forecast:

Schemel has Cojedes and Yaracuy reversed from our map, and he's holding out hope for our side in Vargas, which no one else seems to be doing. He doesn't think Sucre is in the bag yet, though, or that we have a chance in Mérida or Aragua.

The biggest difference, though, has to do with Bolívar, where Schemel thinks we're likely to win, even though the opposition vote will be split between two rival former governors each of which is about as popular as the other! How that's supposed to work, I have no idea...

Then there's Chaverrific pro-government pollster Consultores 30.11. The Venezuelan Embassy in DC has been circulating their forecast - which, right there, tells you about as much as you need to know about these guys' independence. Going through their slides, I got this map:

Ummmm...where to start? 30.11 thinks we have a better chance in Delta Amacuro than we do in Táchira! And they give us an outside chance in Cojedes - rushing into territory where Schemel fears to tread...but then they call Zulia, which the opposition is very likely to win by double-digits, a toss up.

Lets not mince words: this map makes no sense. Their methodology sheet is so garbled, I have to wonder if any actual polling at all went into the making it.

But hey, at least they're giving us Margarita...

23N Map: Caracas Chronicles Forecast

Juan Cristobal and Quico say: So after some debate, we have decided to go out on a limb and publish a Forecast Map for Sunday's gubernatorial elections. We think it'll go like this:


This is basically Juan's post, with Bolívar shifted over to the Solid Chavista column and Mérida downgraded to "Lean" from Solid Chavista. On second thought, we can't see how a divided opposition can possibly take Bolívar, and we have to accept that even if William Dávila is a tool, Mérida has been trending blue in recent votes and the opposition could conceivably pull it off there.

We also decided that in a context where Chávez has spent considerable time and effort attacking the hell out of "dissident chavistas", it doesn't make sense to think of Lenny Manuitt in Guárico or of Julio César Reyes in Barinas as anything other than opposition. So we're making them blue rather than green.

We're real unsure about Portuguesa, where we have neither polling nor inside info to go on. A couple of months ago Datanalisis thought the PPT candidate was competitive there, but we can't really believe chavismo can lose a state like that. Falcón is another place where we wished we had more local knowledge to go on, as was Aragua. But on the basis of what we know now, the former looks like a chavista lock and the latter like an imaginable oppo upset.

Turnout will be a key factor everywhere, but nowhere more so than in the race for Mayor-at-Large of Caracas (how how how to translate Alcalde Mayor?!) We're saying it is lean chavista, but again, if Ocariz wins big in Sucre and the oppo heartland of Chacao, Baruta and El Hatillo turn out in numbers, anything could happen. We'll post on that in detail later.

Overall, the opposition is almost sure to win 4 states, likely to win 9, but could go as high as 13 if the stars line up just right for us. The government is a sure thing in 9 states and likely to win 12 (+ Greater Caracas) in all, but could imaginably win 18 if our people don't turn out.

That's our story and we're sticking by it!

Orbital Identity Crisis Chronicles

Quico says: So I was reading this thing and wondering how long it will take after the satellite breaks down before Chavistas suddenly "discover" that the First Venezuelan Satellite wasn't actually Venezuelan at all and start passing the buck saying, y'know, of course that thing was 100% certified slanty-eyed, rice-burning and amarillo amarillito from day one:

In May 2007, the Nigerian government rejoiced as the Chinese-built Nigeria Communications Satellite - 1 (NIGCOMSAT-1), was sent into orbit by a Chinese rocket at the Xichang launch facility. Nigeria was upbeat and looking forward to 15 years of advanced telecommunications service, thanks to a satellite which China, along with sending into space, had funded to the tune of well over $200 million.

But in early November, after NIGCOMSAT-1 had been in service for only 18 months, all the dreams were dashed. NIGCOMSAT-1 went out of service completely with its onboard electrical power supply damaged significantly due to a malfunctioning solar array. Rumors flew that it was almost completely out of control and perhaps a threat to nearby satellites. These were addressed by Nigerian and later Chinese officials, but only after a day had passed, and after that only a series of denials were issued.

Just a week earlier, the Chinese had launched a new communications satellite for Venezuela known as Venesat-1 which used the same core technology or "bus" as NIGCOMSAT-1. If the sequence of events was reversed, and Venezuela's first communications satellite was still on the ground when the NIGCOMSAT-1 breakdown took place, there is a strong possibility that Chinese satellite engineers would have postponed the launch of Venesat-1 to make sure that the same problem would not surface again.

Now, with the window of opportunity for a thorough pre-launch assessment of Venesat-1 lost, its operators in Caracas are almost completely powerless to control its fate, and no doubt evaluating the need for a new game-plan.

Too-long-to-translate Chronicles

Quico says: Not for the first time, Chuo Torrealba has the most insightful take on the current political situation you're likely to find. (Sorry, Spanish readers only.)

Election guide 2008: The Governors

Juan Cristobal says: - Dozens of governors' races, hundreds of mayor's races. With so much information, what should you watch out for in Sunday's Regional Elections? How will you be able to tell whether we did well or we underperformed?

What follows is my personal summary of the election, including the things to look out for in each state.

First off, Governors.

Safe opposition states

Zulia
Importance: Crucial. The most populous state in the country, one that has rarely supported Chávez in the past, bucking the rest of the country's trend. Oh, and it's the most vergatarious place on Earth ...
Opposition candidate: Pablo Pérez (UNT), Manuel Rosales' right-hand man in the State government for the past eight years. Not a particularly inspired candidate, but he's getting the job done.
Chavista candidate: Giancarlo DiMartino, popularly known as DiMardito. Effective as mayor of Maracaibo, but recent allegations of corruption and links with the FARC have seriously hurt his standing among moderates.
What to look for: Pérez will win, double digits.

Sucre
Importance: Little to none. Beautiful state is also one of the poorest, far removed from Caracas. Traditionally strong adeco presence and nasty fight with the dissident current governor may have come back to haunt chavismo.
Opposition candidate: Eduardo Morales Gil, Sucre's first elected governor and something of an intellectual. Check out this fun little video on his website.
Chavista candidate: Enrique Maestre, mayor of Cumaná. His candidacy has been beset by infighting. One of the states where chavista allies the PCV (Communist Party) is running its own candidate.
What to look for: Comfortable eight-point win for Morales Gil.

Táchira
Importance: A legion of former Venezuelan presidents hailed from Táchira, from Castro to Gómez to Lopez Contreras to Medina to Pérez Jiménez to CAP. Is it something in the water? Border state is home to the main traffic routes to and from Colombia. In recent years, rural areas have become notorious safe havens for the FARC, under the complacent watch of chavista authorities. The state gave the opposition one of its biggest margins of victory last December.
Opposition candidate: César Pérez Vivas, former COPEI congressman and scratching post for demented chavista feline and fellow Táchira congresswoman Iris Varela. Winner of a late primary amongst opposition candidates.
Chavista candidate: Leonardo Salcedo. Won the PSUV primary against all odds, beating strong candidates Vielma Mora and Arias Cárdenas. Considered part of the "technocratic" wing of the PSUV (if there is such a thing). An Oxford-educated lawyer, so it's no surprise Iris Varela considers him a sifrino, which should immediately make him palatable to moderates. Another state where the Communists are running their own candidate.
What to look for: Pérez Vivas with a comfortable nine-point win.

Nueva Esparta
Importance: Little to none. The smallest state in the country is its own little island paradise, far removed from many of the political ills of the mainland. Still, it's nice to know it's there, a sturdy opposition stronghold, one of two states we managed to win in the 2004 debacle.
Opposition candidate: Morel Rodríguez, incumbent governor and a one-time protegé of former President Carlos Andrés Pérez.
Chavista candidate: William Fariñas. Fariñas has had a long and undistinguished career managing different funds set up by Chávez like the FUS and the Foncrei. A former Lt. Cnel. of the Air Force, he participated in the aborted coup of November, 1992. Considered part of chavismo's radical wing.
What to look for: Rodríguez with a comfortable double-digit win.

States that are leaning opposition

Miranda
Importance: Huge. Caracas' backyard is the second most populous state in the nation. A mix of urban and rural voters of all ethnic backgrounds make this an interesting bellweather.
Opposition candidate: Henrique Capriles Radonski (PJ), mayor of Baruta. After much wrangling and the help of Clodosvaldo Russián, who ilegally banned popular former governor Enrique Mendoza, the opposition decanted on Capriles as its candidate.
Chavista candidate: Incumbent governor and Chávez right-hand man, Diosdado Cabello. Hard to believe Godgiven Hair was actually President for, like, three minutes. Makes up lack of charisma with machiavellian sense of timing, a pragmatic streak and an allegedly large stake in many a shady business. Although Chávez has been campaigning hard for him, he has huge negatives that all but rule out a win for him.
What to look for: Capriles ekes out a four-point win, but this could be a cliffhanger, and if Cabello pulls it off, there could be trouble in the streets.

Cojedes
Importance: More symbolic than anything else. Agricultural state in the center of the country is fertile ground for Chavez's message, so an opposition win here would carry large symbolic weight.
Opposition candidate: Alberto Galíndez, former AD governor. Hey, he may be from Cojedes, but he has his own Facebook group.
Chavista candidate: Teodoro Bolívar, mayor of Tinaco. An economist with a graduate degree, Bolívar seems like too much of a yes-man to make much of a dent in a state where the Chávez brand has been severly damaged. Plus, the MEP is running its own candidate in Cojedes.
What to look for: Galíndez with a narrow three-point win.

Guárico
Importance: Moderate. Another one of those llanero states where interesting things are happening. What should be a chavista lock is looking less and less like one.
Opposition candidate: Lenny Manuitt, state Assembly member and the daughter of incumbent governor Eduardo Manuitt. While Manuitt is technically not part of the opposition, she is no chavista either. She hardly qualifies as a chavista "dissident" when Chávez has accused her, her father and her party (the PPT) of high treason and worse. Iris Varela went so far as to accuse Governor Manuitt of violating human rights. Meanwhile, the opposition has been busily shooting itself in the foot by running folk singer Reynaldo Armas and former MAS congressman Nicolás Sosa. Still, look to Manuitt to seal the deal in what has become a fight of Shakesperian proportions.
Chavista candidate: Willian Lara, former Minister, former president of the National Assembly and frontline chavista figurehead. A prissy, urbane university type, Lara has looked hopelessly out of place mingling with rural Guárico voters.
What to look for: Manuitt will eke out a win in this three-way election. Pundits will tack this for the "dissidence," but there is no such thing in Chávez's "with-me-or-against-me" world.

Barinas
Importance: On paper, moderate to little. Symbolically, huge. A loss for Chávez in his own home fiefdom would be hard for the Narcissist-in-chief to digest.
Opposition candidate: Julio Cesar Reyes, mayor of Barinas. While the nominal opposition candidate is former congressman and Chávez marble playmate Rafael Simón Jiménez, he will not be a factor in this election. Like in Guárico, Reyes will ride a wave of anti-corruption outrage and win this election.
Chavista candidate: Adán Chávez Frías. Does the name ring a bell?
What to look for: Save your dulce de lechoza for when Reyes wins with a two-percentage point victory in this three-way election. I eagerly await an ungracious, expletive-laden concession speech by Adán's brother.

Carabobo
Importance: Huge. Industrial powerhouse is the third-most populous state in the nation.
Opposition candidate: Henrique Salas Feo (PV), former governor and the son of former governor and presidential candidate Henrique Salas Römer. Salas Feo lost his job by a few thousand votes in the 2004 debacle, and he looks set to recapture it.
Chavista candidate: Mario Silva, viperous shock-jock. One of the few people in Venezuela the opposition hates more than Chávez. Say what you will, but it takes talent to accomplish such a thing. Running Silva in a moderate, prosperous state like Carabobo is akin to Sarah Palin running for mayor of Provincetown. Don't miss Silva's Frikipedia profile.
What to look for: Salas Feo will win, but by less than people are predicting (I say six points). Incumbent chavista governor and so-called "traitor" Acosta may just steal more votes from Salas than Silva. Still, it's hard to see Silva or Acosta winning this thing.

Final tally for the opposition: 9 states

States that are leaning chavista

Anzoátegui
Importance: High. Populous, prosperous state in eastern Venezuela should be fertile ground for the opposition. In fact, Anzoátegui voted strongly against the government last December.
Opposition candidate: Gustavo Marcano (PJ), mayor of the Puerto La Cruz suburb of Lechería. Marcano was the runner-up in the primaries and assumed the nominal unity candidacy when front-runner Barreto Sira was banned from running. Marcano is young and energetic, but he has been hurt by allegations of nepotism when he named his mother to run for his current post of mayor. Comedian Benjamín Rausseo ("Er Conde del Guácharo") didn't get the unity memo and has run a surprisingly strong campaign.
Chavista candidate: Incumbent governor Tarek William Saab. The "poet of the revolution" has kept a low profile nationally in the last few years, and he has never been regarded as a scenery-chewing chavista.
What to look for: Look for Saab to post a comfortable seven-point win. Marcano and Rausseo's joint vote tallies will trounce Saab, but they won't hatch a unity deal before the election, and first across the finish line wins.

Bolívar
Importance: Large. Industrial powerhouse is the second-largest state of the union, but the governor has traditionally been less powerful than he/she should be given the federal government's outsized importance in the state. Sucre Figarella, anyone?
Opposition candidate: If you want to make the case that the oppopsition cannot get its act together, Bolívar is Exhibit Number One. The opposition is running two strong candidates: former governor, union leader, congressman and Quico's personal friend Andres Velásquez, and former governor Antonio Rojas Suárez. Both are likely to lose, and the fight has at times been ugly. Curious thing about Rojas Suárez: the PJ candidate was the guy at the wheel of the tank that plowed through the gates of the Palacio Blanco on the placid evening of February 4th, 1992.
Chavista candidate: Incumbent governor Francisco Rangel Gómez. This is the rare state where chavistas are running several candidates (the PPT has its own man) and, still, they are poised to win because disunity among the opposing ranks is even worse.
What to look for: Rangel will win a comfortable four-point victory, unless a late-hatching unity pact changes things dramatically.

Yaracuy
Importance: Moderate. State is mostly agricultural, but lately they have become an important exporter of prickly, pointed political punditry.
Opposition candidate: Filippo Lapi. Who? Yes, the brother of the former governor Eduardo Lapi, who is on the run from the feds. Filippo stepped up to the plate like three hours ago, after the Supreme Tribunal decided that Eduardo couldn't run. Late-bloomer will not be able to make a dent.
Chavista candidate: Julio León Heredia, president of the Yaracuy State House. León won the PSUV primary with a mere 26 percent of the votes. Still, this is one state where the Chávez coattails may still carry some weight.
What to look for: León ekes out a close three-point win.

Aragua
Importance: Huge. Industrial powerhouse is looking like an important pickup for chavistas.
Opposition candidate: State legislator Henry Rosales (PODEMOS), who won the Súmate-organized primary in what has been one of the highlights of this election season.
Chavista candidate: Former Finance Minister Rafael Isea. Isea is young, charismatic and sort of likeable from what I can gather.
What to look for: Isea will squeak out a four-point win. It's hard to pinpoint why this isn't closer for the opposition, specially considering that Rosales' ads are really well-made and his website is outstanding. But Aragua is a left-leaning state tailor-made for a moderate chavista candidate like Isea.

Safe chavista states

Mérida
Importance: Moderate. Venezuela's rooftop is beautiful and its population better educated than the average, but its politics tend to be quirky.
Opposition candidate: Former governor William Dávila (AD). A longtime Caracas politician, Dávila is backed by pretty much the entire spectrum of opposition parties. His spots, though, have been particularly uninspired. Check out this one and the ones like it - the candidate is not even shown!
Chavista candidate: Marcos Díaz Orellana, a youngish state government bureaucrat. Díaz benefits from running as a moderate - check out the piano score in the video link on his webpage - straight out of a Hallmark ad.
What to look for: Díaz will win a comfortable five-point victory. This will be particularly disappointing given that Mérida voted 54% against the Constitutional Reform of 2007, but Díaz Orellana has run a disciplined, centrist campaign.

Apure
Importance: Minimal. Apure is like Venezuela's Wyoming, a sparsely populated FARC-infested hinterland. No offense.
Opposition candidate: Miriam de Montilla, former first lady. Don't miss the vacuous, content-free ads complete with an 80s revival band.
Chavista candidate: Incumbent governor Jesús Aguilarte. Apure is one of the few states where the PPT and the MEP are also running candidates. They won't affect the outcome.
What to look for: Aguilarte, double-digits. Apure is the land of caciques, and Aguilarte is the current one. Santos Luzardo never wins in Apure - Doña Bárbara does, and Miriam de Montilla is not Doña Bárbara in this analogy.

Delta Amacuro
Importance: Nil. The Delta is one of those places few Venezuelans have ever been to. With no industry and little agriculture, it basically lives off of Chávez's checkbook.
Opposition candidate: Victor Cedeño (Copei), state assemblyman.
Chavista candidate: Lizeta Hernández, state bureaucrat and the daughter of a former governor. Other chavista candidates include Amado Heredia and Henry Hernández.
What to look for: While El Universal is bullish on Cedeño sneaking in thanks to divisions within chavismo, it's more wishful thinking than anything else. Lizeta Hernández will join Guárico's Lenny Manuitt and the lady in the following state as one of our country's three female governors.

Falcón
Importance: Moderate. Falcón is one of those places that rarely makes the news, but we all sure love to visit its beaches.
Opposition candidate: José Gregorio "Goyo" Graterol (COPEI), former congressman. Graterol was in a bitter fight for the unity nomination against UNT's Luis Stefanelli, and this may have left some scars. His website is surprisingly wonkish in spite of the earsplitting reggaeton soundtrack.
Chavista candidate: Estela de Montilla, incumbent first lady. Chavismo has been remarkably organized in this state, and Falcón residents don't seem to mind the incumbent governor's Kirchnerian move to push his wife into the seat he is term-limited from. I only hope Mrs. Montilla's commitment to her state parallels her dedication to plastic surgery.
What to look for: The bosom, in double digits.

Lara
Importance: High. Populous central state is one of chavismo's bright spots.
Opposition candidate: Who cares? Some schmuck named Pedro Pablo Alcántara (UNT) is gonna take the fall on this one.
Chavista candidate: Henry Falcón. Popular, moderate mayor of Barquisimeto was briefly expelled from the PSUV for not being socialist enough, only to force Chávez to swallow his insults due to the mere power of his appeal. One of the few chavistas a good chunk of the opposition will be voting for.
What to look for: Falcón in Lara, in triple digits.

Monagas
Importance: Moderate to high. Oil powerhouse makes it important, but the real power lies in PDVSA.
Opposition candidate: Domingo Urbina (AD), mayor of Maturín, the state's capital. Long legacy of AD backdeals in the home state of Luis Alfaro Ucero suggests Urbina is running on a damaged brand.
Chavista candidate: Incumbent governor Jose Gregorio "el Gato" Briceño. You gotta admire a politician with the gall to name his political party "my cat", but even more admirable is the fact that he is hugely succesful.
What to look for: Briceño, in double digits.

Portuguesa
Importance: Low. Agricultural state has many problems, but they seem set to stick with chavismo.
Opposition candidate: Jobito Villegas (COPEI), current mayor of Mun. Sucre. Villegas has been mentioned in an ugly scheme involving the state police and human rights violations, and this has kept him off message.
Chavista candidate: Wilmar Castro Sotelo, former Tourism Minister and a close ally of Chávez. A moderate in nature (I once heard him being cordially interviewed by Marianella Salazar of all people), he is benefitting from strong chavista roots in his state.
What to look for: Not even Our Lady of Coromoto can prevent Castro from coasting to a double-digit victory. Chavez's allies the PPT and PCV are running a separate candidate, state congresswoman Bella María Petrizzo, but the PPT will lose this seat they currently hold and Castro will be elected.

Trujillo
Importance: Moderate to none. My old stomping grounds, the place where maracuchos drive to "cool off" and harass the locals with their loud music, it is a lovely state to visit, but is rarely in the news. It is also a chavista stronghold, as solidly red as they come.
Opposition candidate: Enrique Catalán (UNT), the former mayor of Valera.
Chavista candidate: Hugo Cabezas, the former head of the ONIDEX and the guy whose signature in the form of an "x" graces millions of Venezuelan ID cards. When you think of it, voters will be voting using a card signed by Cabezas himself - how's that for effective advertising?
What to look for: Cabezas in double digits. Catalán is a nice enough guy, but he's just no match for the chavista machinery in full throttle backing a candidate with national name recognition. Besides, what do Trujillo voters care about an article in the Miami Herald?

Vargas
Importance: Moderate. Vargas is one of those heavily chavista states that is just begging to be flipped. If only...
Opposition candidate: Roberto Smith (VdP), former Minister, Ambassador and Presidential candidate. A technocrat and a favorite of Quico's, one can only hope his day finally comes. It won't be this time though.
Chavista candidate: Jorge Luis García Carneiro, loyal chavista general, former Minister and a "hero" of chavista mythology concerning the 2002 coup.
What to look for: García Carneiro is a lock here, in double digits. Varguenses' dependence on the federal government will override any hopes Smith has of flipping tiny Vargas.

Final tally for chavismo: 13 states.

Is Cojedes Venezuela's Ohio?

Juan Cristobal says: As Venezuela gears up to elect its mayors and governors just days from now, most of us have been frustrated by the absence of clear polling numbers in many of the key races. The information out there is so muddy, it's become difficult to gauge even which of the races we should keep an eye and an ear on.

Some predict a chavista landslide on Sunday; others foresee big wins for the opposition. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if either of these things happened (or both!). Is there any hope for political junkies like ourselves? Do we have no choice but to throw out common sense and trust, ahem, Quinto Día?!

Not at all. When public data is scarce, you can still infer what the private polling looks like by looking at what politicians are doing and, most importantly, where they are going. In the waning weeks of an election, campaigners focus time and resources on a few key races, the "battlegrounds" if you will. It's not by chance that Barack Obama and John McCain spent most of last month in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Virginia. Even if you'd had no access to public polling at all, you could've figured out that those were the states up for grabs just by looking at their travel schedules.

So it's worth puzzling through the places where Chávez is spending his time these days.

The man has been campaigning furiously (both figuratively and literally) for more than a month now. His rhetoric has heightened to a fevered pitch matched only by the staggering indifference his threats have been met with by our side. Chavismo have decided that the only way their guys are going to win is if this campaign is "nationalized". Their game is to turn Sunday's vote into the Nth national referendum on Chávez, into another episode in the epic struggle between revolutionary good and pitiyanqui evil rather than the humdrum affairs about garbage collection and local policing that races for mayor should normally be.

The upshot is that they're going all-out negative, letting Chávez play the role of pitbull, sans the lipstick. Instead of proposals and ideas, the only things spewing from Chávez's mouth in the last few weeks have been threats, hyperbole, baseless accusations and foam - a winning combination for him in more than one election, but also a strategy that can easily backfire. Time will tell if his approach is working this time around.

So where is Chávez going, and is his travel schedule any indication of what is going to happen?

Let's begin with where he's not going. The consensus is that PSUV candidates for Governor are locks in states like Lara, Trujillo and Vargas. Not surprisingly, Chavez has not spent much time in any of these places. Instead, he has been to Carabobo and Cojedes several times. Along with Anzoategui, Yaracuy and Miranda, these states are where his efforts are concentrated. He's also spent some time in Sucre and (today) in Zulia.

The last two are odd choices. Just a few days ago, the President was in Carúpano ordering the military seizure of the airport there. Today he was in Zulia in a rally supporting the flailing campaign for the governorship of the current mayor of Maracaibo, Giancarlo Di Martino.

Conventional wisdom has Zulia and Sucre as safe opposition states, so the fact that Chavez is going there could indicate that a) the polls are tightening; b) Chávez thinks his presence alone can overturn big opposition leads in a short time; c) the President simply sees these states as too important to lose; or d) Chávez is doing all he can to avoid losing by double digits. An alternate, slightly unnerving possibility is that his advisers are just too scared to tell the Big Man the awful truth about how bad things really are out there.

Carabobo and Miranda are both very important states that are leaning opposition. In Carabobo chavistas are facing a divided ticket, with the President repeatedly declaring the incumbent Governor a traitor and sending him to the "dumpster," and the inimitable chavista candidate, Mario Silva, apparently getting no traction there. As I was preparing this post, for example, I noticed that Silva's webpage had gotten a mere 5 hits today - and it's 11 pm!

The opposition, in turn, is running a single candidate, the popular former governor Henrique Salas Feo. Salas, a two-term Governor until 2004, has tons of name recognition and plenty of cash to campaign. He also has the benefit of running in a state where few have any love for the chavista governor and where Chávez is running a far-left VTV shock-jock with huge negatives among independent voters and very tenuous connections to the place he aspires to govern.

As for Miranda, both Consultores 21 and Datos point to a clear Capriles victory. A loss for Chávez's long time right-hand man, incumbent governor Diosdado Cabello, would be psychologically devastating for chavismo and trash Godgiven's hopes of succeeding Chávez in 2013. Chávez is gamely doing all he can to reverse this, even mentioning Capriles by name (only to trash him, of course), something he had never done before.

Anzoátegui, Cojedes and Yaracuy are curious cases. In Anzoátegui, the opposition is running two candidates, and most pollsters predict this has hurt their chances in favor of incumbent chavista governor Tarek William Saab, one of the more moderate chavistas out there (if there is such a thing). But Chávez has been spending a lot of time there, no doubt predicting a late-hatching unity pact among opposition candidates Marcano and HRH Rausseo. In Yaracuy, another state where the incumbent Governor has proven to be a calamity of quasi-biblical proportions, the opposition is counting on the brother of a persecuted popular former Governor.

In Cojedes, the outgoing chavista Governor Yánez Rangel is knee-deep in Maleta-gate, severely damaging the chavista brand in the state. The opposition, on the other hand, is running the popular former Governor, AD's Alberto Galindez, pictured at the top. This is yet another state where Chávez is campaigning hard for his candidate, Teodoro Bolívar, who judging by this ad, has nothing to say other than he's very, very red.


A win for Galindez, like a win for the dissident chavista mayor of Barinas city in Chávez's home state of Barinas, would be very damaging for the government. It would break the narrative that the opposition can only win in big cities. By showing they can win in the Chávez stronghold of the Llanos, the opposition will have earned huge bragging rights. Call it the start of the Parapara fightback. Coupled with what is looking like a hugely symbolic win for the opposition in Venezuela's biggest slum, Petare, winning Cojedes and Barinas would seal a very good night for our side.

Chávez is taking a big risk in this election. By involving himself so deeply in local races over which he has limited control, he has set himself up to take the political hit if things don't go well for his side.

Normally, lousy returns from swing states like Carabobo, Miranda, Anzoategui, Cojedes and Barinas could be put down to local factors. But having invested himself so heavily in his crappy candidates, Chávez has forfeited all plausible deniability if people like Mario Silva and Jesse Chacón go down.

So stay tuned, and whatever you do, go vote!

23N Map: Huggy Bear Edition

Quico says: I'm still looking for a bird's eye view of what to expect from next Sunday's state and local elections, but with polling spotty and mostly private, disinformation rife and most media concentrating on their local races only, it's tough going.

The not-always-reliable newsweekly Quinto Día gets props for at least trying to provide the Whole Picture as far as governors' races go, something the big national dailies don't seem to be even striving for.

Quinto Día's method is not exactly scientific: basically, they got on the phone and called 52 local journos all over the country, asking them what the "word on the street" is. Call it the Huggy Bear approach to election forecasting.

This map is cobbled together from my subjective synthesis of what their subjective reporting based on subjective assessments of subjective informants found:


So word on the street has the opposition up in 6 states - including the 3 most populous - chavismo up in 11 (plus Caracas), chavista dissidents ahead in 3, and 2 states as genuine toss-ups.

Obviously there are all kinds of pitfalls to this kind of forecasting, with various informants clearly having a stake in "pushing" their favorite candidates/compadres to a national audience. (Have I hedged this map enough yet?)

Still and all, some things jump out at you:

Local journos in Falcón and Cojedes don't think the election is a done deal yet. In Miranda, you have as many opinions as interviewees - though Diosdado's very high negatives make it hard to imagine him winning - and in Mérida and Bolívar any outcome seems likely. Even at this late stage, internal splits look like they will cost the government Carabobo and the opposition Anzoátegui, and possibly Bolívar as well.

My sense is that the real uncertainty next Sunday will be over Mérida, Bolívar and - especially - Miranda. But Huggy Bear says keep an eye on Falcón, too, where the oppo candidate has been making up ground against the outgoing governor's doña, who was once seen as a shoo in.

My favorite bit of this map, though, is that southernmost patch of deep green covering Chávez's home state, where his brother Adan now looks all but certain to lose the governorship to the ex-chavista, now oppositionish mayor of Barinas City.

I spent a few months in Barinas back in 2001-2002, and I was always amazed to witness the contrast between people's fervent devotion to Hugo Chávez and their visceral disgust with his family. The Chávez Clan (mom, dad, ne'er-do-well brothers) has ruled the state as a personal fiefdom for years, barely even bothering to dissimulate its corruption. Their opponent this time is a kind of llanero technocrat by the name of Julio Cesar Reyes. He's a genuinely popular figure down there, and the psychological impact for chavismo of losing on such symbolically loaded turf is very hard to overstate.