Over the past two weeks polling results have been released with tough numbers for the government. Overall they show majority support for a full audit of the April 14 vote and the opposition turning the tables on Chavismo in favorability ratings.
A Datanalisis flashpoll from April 18-19, less than a week after the election, showed that 58% of respondents favored an audit of the ballot boxes, 51% thought the results emitted by the CNE were transparent and accurate. 49% of respondents expressed doubts.
The same methodology ten days later (April 27-30) found that 58% of respondents disapproved of the CNE’s refusal to include the voter registry books in the audit, including 40% of Nicolas Maduro’s supporters. 56% agreed with Capriles’ contesting the results in the Supreme Court.
Numbers released today from IVAD (April 28-May 5) show that 61.2% of respondents think there should have been a complete audit and only 44% have a positive view of the CNE’s work (see summaries here and here).
The numbers from April 18-19 show the candidates still about even with Maduro’s favorability at 41.6% and negatives at 37.7% (net +3.9), while Capriles’s favorability was at 42.1% and negatives were at 33.1% (net +9.0%). Given that this poll has a high margin of error +/-3.8% these numbers are a statistical tie.
In IVAD’s more recent numbers 51.3% have a favorable view of Maduro’s job performance while 46.7% have a negative view. However, the question of who people would vote for if there was a new election produced 40.8% supporting Maduro and 45.8% supporting Capriles. Furthermore, in IVAD’s analysis of political groupings, 40.7% support the government while 44% support the opposition. 52.8% of respondents manifested that they wanted the country to take a different direction while 44.7% said they wanted the country to maintain the path taken by Hugo Chávez.
It is important to note that these results are not likely to be subject to anti-government bias. In the 2012 presidential elections both firms had a small pro-government bias when comparing their last polls with the actual election results. They also both had Maduro as the strong favorite for the April 14 elections.