This Is How Maduro Could Lose Control

Elections in other countries don’t usually affect daily life in the United States. But the vote Venezuela’s authoritarian government plans to hold Sunday is an exception. It’s likely to have consequences for immigration to the United States, the U.S.-Mexico border and perhaps even the race for the White House.

If Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolás Maduro, secures another term—which, given his opponent’s 25- to 30-point lead in the polls, would require massive fraud — even more Venezuelans will flee their country and its collapsed economy, joining the nearly 8 million already abroad. A recent survey suggested that more than 10 percent of the country’s population would try to emigrate if Maduro retains power. Many will head for the United States, possibly reinforcing Donald Trump’s claims of an out-of-control border and diminishing Democrats’ prospects.

But if opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia wins in a landslide as the polls predict—and if, against all odds, a critical mass of Maduro government insiders acknowledge it—Venezuela might be poised to turn a corner toward greater stability, more democracy and less emigration.

That is what María Corina Machado, the opposition’s charismatic leader, has promised as she has crisscrossed the country uniting voters behind González. (Machado herself would be on the ballot if the government hadn’t barred her from running.)

While Machado promises that the elections can bring change—and many Venezuelans are eager to believe her—there’s no ignoring the obvious: Maduro, with U.S. Department of Justice charges, a U.S. State Department bounty and an International Criminal Court investigation of extrajudicial killings and torture hanging over his head, has every incentive to fight to remain in power regardless of the results. Many expect that he will rig the election as he has before and use the military to crush any postelection protests.

His government has already targeted numerous people tied to Machado, from her top bodyguard to vendors who sold her empanadas. On Thursday, she accused government agents of cutting her car’s brakes.

But Venezuelans might not be hoping for change in vain. Authoritarians sometimes lose control of elections, even those they try to script in advance. The Philippines, Chile, Nicaragua and, more recently, Guatemala and Honduras have all seen autocrats head confidently into elections they thought they could control only to find they couldn’t. Opposition landslides were too big to erase with fraud, attempts to deny the results sparked mass protests, or government insiders and militaries defected, leaving autocrats isolated.

The chances of such a scenario playing out in Venezuela, while low, are not zero. What might force Maduro to accept a loss? Three factors have mattered elsewhere and are likely to matter in Venezuela too: the military, the voters and other countries in the region.

For an autocrat, the support of military generals is the ultimate backstop. With the guys with guns on your side, you can ride out almost any amount of popular pressure. Here, Maduro seems to have his bases covered: He controls the military with a system of carrots and sticks. The carrots include military control of key sectors of the economy and organized crime. The sticks are kidnapping and torture of those suspected of disloyalty by Venezuelan and Cuban counterintelligence agents.

If the military abandons Maduro after the vote—a big if—it will be because the carrots have run out and the opposition promised protection from prosecution. The middle ranks of the armed forces—who are more likely to experience the deprivation of ordinary life in Venezuela than to share the generals’ spoils—are already unhappy, according to a leading expert. And between the Biden administration’s renewed sanctions on Venezuelan oil and Maduro’s spending to get out the vote, the president could be running short on cash to line the generals’ pockets. Some see signs of slipping resolve in security forces’ relative restraint in countering some recent opposition demonstrations.

The country’s electorate is another key factor. For years, infighting within the opposition led to voter apathy. But today the opposition is united and organized as never before, energizing voters, nearly half of whom told pollsters they will protest if there’s election fraud.

Make no mistake: This election will not be free or fair. The Maduro government has mastered voter suppression and manipulation.

But margins matter, and Maduro has rarely trailed so far behind his challengers in the polls. Erasing a 5- or 10-point defeat with fraud is one thing; a 30-point loss is another. Moreover, the opposition is ready to take exit polls and document irregularities. A similar effort allowed Honduras’ opposition to prove its landslide win in 2021 and pressure the ruling party to concede. The bigger and more irrefutable the landslide, the greater the chances Maduro will lose control.

The third crucial variable is Venezuela’s neighbors—or, better put, neighborhood: Latin America and the United States. Regional powers have eased other democratic transitions by combining pressure on authoritarians with guarantees that they won’t lose everything (including their freedom) if they relinquish power.

That’s trickier here. Maduro and his inner circle are used to U.S. economic sanctions and other forms of pressure. They probably fear a further tightening of sanctions by President Biden, who smartly refrained from fully reimposing them to preserve leverage, but they fear losing power even more. And Maduro isn’t likely to trust many other governments to guarantee him a soft landing if he steps down. The leftist presidents of Colombia and Brazil, who have flip-flopped between criticizing and apologizing for Maduro, are unlikely to publicly push Maduro to concede, but they could mediate government-opposition negotiations in the event of a contested election.

If the improbable does happen Sunday and the result proves to be a serious threat to the regime, that will be only the beginning. Negotiations on power-sharing and a soft landing for Maduro might follow. The U.S. Embassy in Caracas could eventually reopen and start working with Venezuela’s government on addressing economic chaos and the mass migration it spurs.

But if the expected happens and Maduro clings to power by fraud and other illegitimate means, Venezuela will have missed perhaps its last best chance at change for a long time. Instability will persist and perhaps deepen, and Latin America and the United States will have no choice but to absorb the consequences.

This publication is part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy.