Exit polls show Chavez heading to Venezuelan re-election

by Enrique Andres Pretel

Anti-U.S. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez headed to re-election on Sunday, according to an exit poll linked to the government that said the leftist had a wide lead over his united opposition rival.

Chavez won 58 percent, while Manuel Rosales, a governor of an oil-producing province trailed with 40 percent, said Evans/McDonough Co., a U.S. pollster paid by the state oil company.

If the exit poll proves right, Chavez, 52, would have a strong majority to press his self-styled socialist revolution at home and forge an anti-U.S. front in Latin America to counter what he calls the superpower's "imperialism."

Although Evans/McDonough is linked to the government, its surveys have credibility in Venezuela because it has been transparent about its methodology and it precisely predicted the outcome of a 2004 recall referendum that Chavez won.

Chavez, a close ally of Cuban President Fidel Castro, has vowed to use a new six-year mandate to scrap presidential term limits and create a single-party that he expects to lead in power for decades.

He also aims to take further state control of the country's top industry -- oil.

Most opinion polls before the election showed a double-digit lead for Chavez, who is popular among the majority poor because of his free spending of the OPEC country's oil bonanza on clinics and schools.

Evans/McDonough interviewed more than 400,000 voters around the country as a basis for its exit poll, which had a margin of error of 1.5 percentage points, according to a local coordinator German Campos.

"Rosales has people on his side but not enough," said Alejandro Monterroza, 48, a taxi driver from a shantytown driving in an affluent part of Caracas.

"People round here do not know what it is like in the slums. It is a bigger party than New Year's Eve. Everyone is singing 'Chavez isn't going' -- that should be the national anthem," he added.

CRY FRAUD Continued ...