Poll: More than 40% of Venezuelans – 10 Million People – Considering Leaving Country

Migrants, mostly Venezuelans, cross a river during their journey through the Darien Gap fr
AP Photo/Fernando Vergara
Christian K. Caruzo

A poll published this week by the Venezuelan firm Meganálisis found that 43.2 percent of Venezuelans — more than 10 million people — are considering leaving the country following the results of the July 28 sham presidential election, which socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro claims he “won.”

Venezuela is enduring a new political crisis after the country’s National Electoral Council (CNE) — an entity controlled by the Maduro regime — claimed that Maduro was “reelected” for a third six-year term after “winning” the July 28 sham presidential election. The electoral authority has refused to publish voter data that could demonstrate that Maduro “obtained” 51 percent of the votes as they claim.

The Venezuelan opposition has accused Maduro of stealing the election and published thousands of vote tallies obtained on the day of the election that it claims can prove that its candidate, Edmundo González, was the actual winner of the election. Several countries and international organizations have denounced Maduro’s “victory” claims as fraudulent.

The situation has sparked nationwide protests that the Maduro regime responded to with a brutal crackdown campaign, resulting in at least 24 deaths and the arbitrary arrests of more than 2,400 individuals by the regime’s security forces. The rogue socialist regime has also enacted a new wave of internet censorship and the establishment of “reeducation” camps for the detained dissidents.

Meganálisis’s poll, conducted between August 8-11, found that 93.4 percent of the respondents consider that Edmundo González was the actual winner of the July 28 sham election. Another 92.7 percent expressed a lack of trust in the Venezuelan electoral authorities and the “results” announced by CNE head Elvis Amoroso of Maduro’s alleged “victory.”

Most respondents expressed feeling “impotence, indignation, anxiety and annoyance” following the aftermath of the election.

43.2 percent of the poll’s respondents said that they are considering leaving the country following the election. Meganálisis explained that 43.2 percent would represent 10.4 million Venezuelans, of which 6.9 million are part of the country’s electorate.

Out of the 43.2 percent considering leaving, the polling firm further explained in a breakdown, 39.8 percent said they did not know when they would leave, 22.3 percent said that they will begin packing up at some point during 2025, 15.6 percent will do it after December, 5.8 percent in “a couple months,” and 1.6 will begin leaving “immediately.”

 

Over the past decade, the collapse of socialism in Venezuela led by the Maduro regime and the ruling socialists’ growing authoritarianism prompted an unprecedented migrant crisis in the Western Hemisphere. Nearly 8 million Venezuelan citizens have fled their country since 2014.

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado warned last week that Maduro’s continued efforts to illegally cling to power would result in another Venezuelan migrant wave. Machado, in an online press conference with Mexican journalists, estimated that the prospective migrant wave could grow to total between 3-5 million Venezuelans “in a very short time.” 

According to statistical information from the Regional Inter-Agency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela (R4V), the majority of the Venezuelan migrants in the region presently reside in Colombia, Peru, the United States, Brazil, Spain, Chile, Ecuador, and Argentina. The R4V platform is a joint effort between the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to address the Venezuelan migrant crisis in Latin American and the Caribbean.

In July, the governments of Colombia and Peru announced that they would begin reinforcing their borders out of concern of a surge in Venezuelan migrants following the election.

Chile, whose far-left President Gabriel Boric has denounced Maduro’s fraudulent attempts to stay in power, reportedly made calls to prepare for a new Venezuelan migrant wave and has made proposals to other Latin American countries to agree on migrant “quotas” that each country is willing to accept.

Chilean presidential spokesperson Camila Vallejo said that the quota proposal is inspired by the migration management that European countries have done in the face of recent crises, such as the arrival of Ukrainian refugees fleeing from Russia’s ongoing invasion of their country.

“The migration of Venezuelans has never ceased to our country,” Vallejo said in early August. “But, evidently, given the latest facts and events, what our government has done is to prepare for that possibility.”

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