2006 Venezuelan presidential election

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Presidential elections were held in Venezuela on 3 December 2006 to elect a president for a six year term to begin on 10 January 2007. The contest was primarily between incumbent President Hugo Chávez, and Zulia Governor Manuel Rosales of the opposition party A New Era. After winning a recall referendum in 2004, President Chávez positioned himself for re election in 2006 for a second full term. The opposition did not hold a primary, instead, the candidates reached a consensus into backing the governor of the largest state (Zulia), Manuel Rosales. Chávez benefited from a high popularity, and led most opinion polls throughout the campaign. He went to win re election by the widest margin by percentage of the popular vote since the 1947 elections, and by the largest margin of votes cast in the history of Venezuela.

Jesús Caldera Infante the former president of FOGADE, representing the New Progressive Alliance. On 29 November, he withdrew his candidacy and backed Rosales. Benjamín Rausseo a stand up comedian, endorsed by the newly formed "PIEDRA" party. Three weeks before the election, in accordance with a campaign pledge he had made earlier (to stand down if not placed first or second in the opinion polls), he withdrew his candidacy without endorsing either Chávez or Rosales, telling his supporters to vote for either.

Opposition leaders debated on how they could choose a single candidate. Julio Borges, of Justice First, proposed holding primary elections for August 2006. Civil society organization Súmate recommended procedures for a primary, to be held on 13 August 2006, to choose the opposition candidate for the December 2006 presidential elections. Among the candidates were: Manuel Rosales (A New Era), Teodoro Petkoff (independent), Sergio Omar Calderón (Copei), Wiliam Ojeda (Un Solo Pueblo), Cecilia Sosa (Federal Republican Party), Enrique Tejera París (independent) and Vicente Brito (Republican Movement). The main candidates, Julio Borges and Teodoro Petkoff, agreed to withdraw from the pre candidacy to endorse Manuel Rosales, based on his opinion polling support. More than thirty political and civil organizations publicly expressed their support to Rosales. The trade union bureau of Democratic Actions, as well as its regional components and many party leaders, announced that they would support the single opposition candidate in the December elections. On 9 August, Súmate announced that the 13 August primary election would not be held, since the candidates had decided to back Manuel Rosales as the single opposition candidate. María Corina Machado said that the primary "initiative accomplished its goal and that Súmate would continue working to ensure clean elections and respect for citizens' rights".

Chávez's campaign manager Rafael Lacava said that the campaign was to be based on defending Venezuela's national sovereignty and promoting world peace. According to Unión Radio, Lacava added that a campaign theme was to be the "country's freedom to no longer be a North American colony". According to the Associated Press, Chávez launched his campaign "with warnings that Washington is trying to undermine December's presidential vote and destabilize Venezuela", saying "I am the candidate of the revolution and without a doubt I am the candidate of the national majority", dismissing other candidates as "tools of the U. S. government". El Universal reports that Chávez said, "In this electoral process there are two candidates only, namely Hugo Chávez and George W. Bush". Chávez promised that if elected he would personally convoke a midterm recall referendum in the year 2010 without the need for petition signatures as was the case with the 2004 recall referendum, and that he won that recall referendum, he would then call for a referendum to ask the people for indefinite re election to be put into the constitution. On 26 November Chávez made his final rally in Caracas. Reuters estimated that hundreds of thousands participated. Chávez supporters packed several streets.

Rosales said that the backbone of his government program was to be the social arena, saying it will be a "sound and well defined" program, including a "fair allocation of oil revenues by means of two axes– minimum wage for all unemployed and direct contribution to the underprivileged". The latter being promoted as Mi Negra which is a debit card handed out to the poor with monthly deposits from 20% of oil industry profits. Nevertheless, a poll shows 59% of the Venezuelan people rejected the Mi Negra program, preferring stable jobs. According to the Los Angeles Times, Rosales stated that Chávez was vulnerable on his "massive foreign aid programs, government approved takeovers of land and buildings, and the perception that crime is increasing". Rosales said, "We will distribute land to the peasants, but we will buy it in such a way as to respect the principle of private property, just as we will respect those of human rights and social justice". Rosales would halt oil giveaways, "including sales of discounted oil to Cuba, until Venezuela reduced its high poverty rate". The Associated Press reports that Rosales accuses Chávez of "overspending on a military buildup" and pledged "to use Venezuela's oil wealth to help the poor and improve education and health care", ridiculing Chávez's "claims of a possible war with the U. S." and saying, "Venezuela's real war should be against rampant street crime". Rosales held several large rallies around the country; the largest being "Las Avalanchas" in Caracas. Rallies were held in several states to try to get the Rosales campaign to be heard by as many people as possible. To close his election campaign, Manuel Rosales held a huge final rally in Caracas with an estimate by the Associated Press to be in the hundreds of thousands.

Rosales demanded a public debate, saying Chávez should choose the TV channel where the debate would be broadcast. He also said "I am waiting for him (Chávez) to have a debate with me broadcast by all the TV channels to allow Venezuelans to know what is the project and the vision of the country he has and the project and vision we have". Chávez declared he would not debate Rosales because "the candidates from the opposition do not even have the condition to debate a schoolboy or girl in sixth grade from a Bolivarian school".

Chávez launched his campaign with a slogan of 10 Millones de votos (10 million votes), On multiple occasions the campaign used the more combative "10 millones por el buche" (10 million votes down their throats). On 17 August 2006, while leading the oath at the national campaign headquarters (Commando Miranda), Chávez acknowledged that 10 million votes would be hard to attain. A poll conducted by Cifras Escenarios reported that 76.7% of Venezuelans liked the love message. The English translation of the message is as follows:

Always, I have done everything out of love. For the love of trees and rivers, I became a painter. For the love of knowledge, studies, I left my dearest village, to study. For the love of sports I became a ball player. For the love of the motherland I became a soldier. For the love of the people I became President, you made me President. I have ruled these years out of love. For love we did Barrio Adentro. For love we did Mission Robinson. For love we did Mercal. We have done everything for love. There is a lot left to do. I need more time. I NEED YOUR VOTE. YOUR VOTE FOR LOVE.

International markets largely saw a Chávez victory. Rafael de la Fuente of BNP Paribas stated "The market expects a Chávez victory, they don't even question it". Ricardo Amorim of WestLB Research "The vision I see is that of a 20 point victory We would be surprised if he does not win". Patrick Esteruelas of Eurasia Group saw Chávez winning by 60 percent. Also arguing that a high turnout would benefit Chávez, Goldman Sachs dismissed the close polling arguing, "Chávez is the favorite to win the election due to vast control of logistical and financial state resources, and influence over key institutions".

Four organisations were given permission to send official election observers to monitor the elections: Carter Center, European Union, Mercosur and Organization of American States. A fifth organisation was refused permission: Cortes Generales (Spanish parliament). Polling stations opened at 6:00 a. m. but newspaper El Universal reported that in some electoral centers, voters waited in line since 3:00 a. m. According to the National Electoral Council
(CNE) director Humberto Castillo, the turnout in polling stations was massive, and the conditions were "normal" throughout the country. Polling station were scheduled to close at 4:00 p. m.

Rosales' campaign team denounced irregularities in the closing of some voting booths, saying that Plan República—the armed forces sent to guard the electoral process—would not let some electoral centers be closed even though no voters remained in line. Rosales' spokesman also alerted about the reopening of already closed centers. CNE member Vicente Díaz later reaffirmed that all polling stations without voters in line must be closed, and that no booths under any circumstances could be reopened. The Carter Center concluded that the elections were "fair, transparent and without serious irregularities". A study conducted by Ezequiel Zamora (former vice president of the CNE), Freddy Malpica (former rector of the Universidad Simón Bolívar), Guillermo Salas (USB professor), Jorge Tamayo (UCV professor), Ramiro Esparragoza (UCV professor), four statistics experts and three computer engineers concluded in January 2007 that the 2006 presidential elections presented "important statistical inconsistencies, despite the fact that the opposition candidate recognized the results". They argued that the elections results of many electoral centers showed a very regular statistical distribution of the votes in favor of Rosales in comparison with the dispersion of the votes for Chávez. This suggest that the regularities are the possible result of numerical ceilings embedded in the voting machines. Also there seems to be a regular statistical abstention of 25% in most electoral centers and no signs of dispersion. They have recommended further studies of the data in order to understand the deficiencies of the Venezuelan electoral system and in order to have a "minimum of transparency" in any future electoral process.

The opposition claimed there was unfair pressure by the government against governmental workers who might not want to support the president. They released a video that showed energy minister and head of PDVSA, Rafael Ramírez, telling state oil workers to back President Hugo Chávez or to leave their jobs. He also said PDVSA is red "from top to bottom"(PDVSA es roja, rojita de arriba abajo). He also said that PDVSA's "workers are with this revolution, and those who aren't should go somewhere else. Go to Miami." Opposition media outlets have been repeating the 14 minute video over and over again. President Chávez said he supported the PDVSA director and recommended him to make the same speech to oil workers 100 times a day. The CNE opened an investigation into Rafael Ramírez following the protests from the opposition and Ramírez was eventually fined.

Even though a fair number of international observers were present, the CNE instituted an open and public series of audits of the vote results. Each one of the 11,118 automated polling places was equipped with multiple high tech touch screen DRE voting machines, one to a "mesa electoral," or "voting table." In total, 32,331 voting machines were in use country wide. After the vote is cast, each machine prints out a paper ballot, or VVPAT, which is inspected by the voter and deposited in a ballot box belonging to the machine's table. The voting machines perform in a stand alone fashion, disconnected from any network until the polls close. Voting session closure at each of the voting stations in a given polling center is determined either by the lack of further voters after the lines have emptied, or by the hour, at the discretion of the president of the voting table.