Venezuelans are waiting anxiously for the results of the presidential election that could pave the way to an end to 25 years of single party rule, even as some polls remained open more than an hour after a deadline to close.
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President Nicolas Maduro, in seeking a third term, faced his toughest challenge yet from Edmundo Gonzalez, a retired diplomat who was unknown to voters before being tapped in April as a last-minute stand-in for opposition powerhouse Maria Corina Machado.
The election will have ripple effects throughout the Americas, with government opponents and supporters alike signalling their interest in joining the exodus of 7.7 million Venezuelans who have already migrated should Maduro win another six year term.
Opposition leaders were already celebrating online and on the streets of capitals throughout Latin America where Venezuelan migrants have settled, what they assured was a landslide victory for Gonzalez.
Polls were supposed to begin closing at 6pm but more than an hour after the deadline some voting centres in Caracas remained open and authorities were silent.
The opposition called for the National Electoral Council to begin counting ballots.
"This is the decisive moment," Machado, flanked by Gonzalez, told reporters at their campaign headquarters on Sunday.
Machado was careful not to claim victory before authorities announce results but said she had already received copies of some official voting tallies and they indicated a record turnout.
Gonzalez was similarly enthused, congratulating Venezuelans on the "historic" day and urging supporters to "celebrate in peace".
A few Maduro allies were also projecting confidence.
"The ballot boxes express what the streets said during these past few months of campaigning," Maduro's son, lawmaker Nicolas Maduro Guerra, said on X. "Victory for the Venezuelan people."
Authorities set Sunday's election to coincide with what would have been the 70th birthday of former president Hugo Chavez, the revered leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013, leaving his Bolivarian revolution in the hands of Maduro.
But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for crushing wages, spurring hunger, crippling the oil industry and separating families due to migration.
Maduro, 61, faces an opposition that has lined up behind a single candidate after years of intraparty divisions and election boycotts.
Machado was blocked by the Maduro-controlled supreme court from running for any office for 15 years.
The former lawmaker swept the opposition's October primary with more than 90 per cent of the vote.
After she was blocked from joining the presidential race, she chose a university professor as her substitute, but the National Electoral Council also barred her from registering, resulting in Gonzalez, a political newcomer, being chosen.
After voting, Maduro said he would recognise the election result and urged the other nine candidates to publicly declare that they would do the same.
"No one is going to create chaos in Venezuela," Maduro said.
Venezuela sits atop the world's largest proven oil reserves and once boasted Latin America's most advanced economy, but it entered into a free fall after Maduro took the helm.
Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation led to social unrest and then mass emigration.
Economic sanctions from US seeking to force Maduro from power after his 2018 re-election - which the US and dozens of other countries condemned as illegitimate - only deepened the crisis.
Australian Associated Press
