Anything is possible in Venezuela’s elections today, but there is a good chance that opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski will do better than any of his predecessors in the polls, and that — win or lose — he will put President Hugo Chávez’s 14-year-old regime against the ropes.
There is a plausible scenario that even if Capriles loses by a narrow margin, a good showing in today’s election will allow him to keep the opposition unified, and to become a viable alternative to a president who may have terminal cancer, and who has no successor who could beat Capriles.
Under Venezuela’s constitution, if the president dies within the first