Venezuelans are heading to the polls on Sunday for their first full election in over a decade. Opposition parties have ended their boycott and united behind a single candidate, hoping to unseat the current regime. 

“The de facto opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has energized the Venezuelan people to the point that both supporters and opponents of the current government want change,” Joseph Humire, the executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS), told Digital. 

“But changing the president isn’t enough,” Humire warned. “No matter who Venezuela’s next president is, the will adapt and continue operating. An internal effort is necessary but not sufficient to dismantle the Venezuela Threat Network.”

“Yet, this doesn’t diminish what Maria Corina has accomplished, regardless of the outcome on Sunday – she has given Venezuelans another chance,” he added. 

Opposition supporters have rallied behind Edmundo Gonzalez, who held a substantial lead over incumbent Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro going into the weekend. Maduro has warned that a loss for his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) would result in a “bloodbath.”

The PSUV leads a coalition that holds 256 of the 277 seats in the country’s National Assembly and controls the Supreme Tribunal of Justice courts and the National Electoral Council. The opposition was unable to unite behind a single candidate, and due to accusations that free and fair elections were impossible under Maduro’s government. 

Humire posted polling data on social media platform X showing expected results based on low or high levels of voter turnout, both indicating Maduro receiving roughly half as many votes as Gonzalez.

Humire suggested that Maduro must either engage in widespread fraud to steal the election or reach a deal to remain in power.

Demonstrations held on Thursday ahead of the vote drew thousands to the capital, where Maduro claimed his opponents were promoting violence while he sought only peace. The opposition faced a difficult challenge in getting their message out: State television did not broadcast any of the opposition rally. 

And that Venezuelans living abroad have struggled to register to vote, as bureaucratic hurdles have prevented all but a small fraction of voters from being prepared for Sunday’s election. 

Maduro succeeded Hugo Chavez as leader of the PSUV following the latter’s death and took office in 2013. The party has remained in power for over a quarter of a century, making Sunday’s election a potentially pivotal moment for the entire country. 

“Against all odds, overcoming the immense geopolitical occupational forces present in Venezuela, the criminal enterprise in power and the entrenched kleptocratic regime … Sunday’s election could mark the beginning of the end of the most disastrous political catastrophe in our country’s history,” Isaias Medina III, former U.N. Security Council diplomat and Harvard Mason fellow, told Digital. 

“Should this occur, the subsequent development and growth of our nation will be unparalleled, driven by Western-minded policies with allied nations that will rectify the 21st-century socialist aberrations entrenched over the last two decades in the richest country in the region,” Medina said. “Like a city on a hill, a free Venezuela shall shine again.”