Venezuela's Maduro would win if Chavez goes: poll

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Venezuela's Maduro would win if Chavez goes: poll

CARACAS | Tue Feb 19, 2013 8:35am EST

(Reuters) - Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro would comfortably win a presidential election should his boss Hugo Chavez's cancer force him out of power, according to an opinion poll.

The first survey on such a scenario, by local pollster Hinterlaces, gave Maduro a potential 50 percent of votes, compared to 36 percent for opposition leader Henrique Capriles.

Chavez returned to Venezuela on Monday after a long stay in Cuba to continue treatment at home for the disease that is jeopardizing his 14-year socialist rule of the South American OPEC nation.

He has named 50-year-old former bus driver and union activist Maduro as his preferred successor. But Capriles, 40, a center-left state governor who lost to Chavez in a presidential vote last year, would likely run again.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/19/us-venezula-chavez-idUSBRE91I0LK20130219

[naaman fletcher]

1. This is why I am surprised the opposition wants Chavez to die so badly

With shortages and such getting worse, you would think the opposition would be better off with a sick and/or resigned Chavez kicking around another year or two.

[Bacchus4.0]

2. Capriles is the progressive

I'd vote for him.

[joshcryer]

3. +1, and he is hard on corruption.

As we saw when the chavista bribed one of his officials and he fired him within 30 minutes of it surfacing.

[joshcryer]

5. The opposition is not homogeneous.

You got Venezuelans living in Miami who want Chavez to die because they're sinister fucks. In Venezuela there is a desire to see this drag out for as long as possible. Then there are some who want Chavez to resign immediately and let Maduro be anointed simply because they feel that's the constitutional process (if Chavez cannot do his duties as President then he should step down, etc). The last option there allows Capriles to fall into obscurity (two losses against two Presidents in a year), and allows Leopold Lopez (a much more right wing candidate, economically speaking) to jump in and save the country. 7+ years from now.

[joshcryer]

4. Damn right wing Reuters reporting right wing lies.