A smooth Venezuelan election that would have led to greater economic opening also suited the country’s Latin American neighbors, including Mr. Maduro’s old allies, the leftist governments of Brazil and Colombia.

After a campaign marked by intensifying efforts by Mr. Maduro’s allies to rein in the opposition — including arrests of opposition campaign workers, intimidation and vote suppression — the opposition bet heavily on an effort to have supporters on hand to get a physical printout of the voting tally from every voting machine after the polls closed.

As the year progressed, growth of the Venezuelan economy slowed to a crawl, inflation climbed above 50 percent, and staples such as toilet paper, milk, and flour became increasingly difficult to obtain. Discontent with the Maduro government’s handling of the economy and with the growing crime rate led to street protests by students in San Cristóbal in western Venezuela in early February 2014 that soon spread to other cities, including Caracas, over the coming weeks.

Chávez's endorsement of Maduro sidelined Diosdado Cabello, a former vice president and powerful Socialist Party official with ties to the armed forces, who had been widely considered a top candidate to be Chávez's successor. After Maduro was endorsed by Chávez, Cabello "immediately pledged loyalty" to both men.[72]

Opposition candidates were banned from running, opposition aides detained, many Venezuelans overseas struggled to register to vote and many international election observers were disinvited.

"We did it!" Musk wrote in a celebratory email to the company. "What an incredible job by an amazing team."

Since the beginning of the presidential crisis, Venezuela has been exposed to frequent "information blackouts", periods without access to Net or other news services during important political events.[28][223] Since January, the National Assembly and Guaido's speeches are regularly disrupted, television channels and radio programs have been censored and many journalists were illegally detained.

That appears unlikely now, and the dubious election results could test the thaw between Mr. Maduro and business leaders, and could possibly trigger a new wave of international sanctions.

By Monday afternoon, the men had set up a tent and were accepting food and water donations, saying they planned to stay until the results were overturned. Police officers watched but did not intervene.

In 2014, Maduro was named as one of TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential People. In the article, it explained that whether or not Venezuela collapses "now depends on Maduro", saying it also depends on whether Maduro "can step out of the shadow of his pugnacious predecessor and compromise with his opponents".[312]

When he was informed of the incident, President Chávez said Maduro's detention was retaliation for his own speech at the UN General Assembly and stated that the authorities detained Maduro over his links to the Venezuelan failed coup in 1992, a charge that President Chávez denied.[68]

The opposition made a grand attempt to delegitimize Maduro’s rule on July 16 by holding an unofficial plebiscite (branded in the language of the constitution as a “popular consultation”) that addressed three matters: whether voters rejected Maduro’s proposed constituent assembly; whether they desired the armed forces to copyright the constitution; and whether they wanted elections to be held before the official end of Maduro’s term in 2018.

In a 2010 essay for Marie Claire, his first wife, Justine Musk, a writer whom he met in college and married in 2000, wrote that even before making his millions Mr Musk was "not a man who takes pelo for an answer".

There was the fact President Maduro’s face remained vlogdolisboa emblazoned above some poll stations even on voting day.