Chávez Forces Garner Clear Election Victory.  President Hugo Chávez Frias emerged victorious in presidential, congressional and state elections on 30 July.  The nationwide elections conclude the broad scale political reform process launched at the Chávez inauguration in February 1999 and promise to focus the government's attention on the measures required to generate economic recovery.  According to the final results, president Hugo Chávez beat out his closest rival Francisco Arias Cardenas by 21 points, which was consistent with survey results prior to the elections.  Chávez obtained 59.2% to Arias' 37.8% and independent candidate Claudio Fermín's 2.8%.  While opinion polls conducted in the past several months had shown that Chávez was losing the strong popular support enjoyed throughout most of last year, the president obtained an even stronger endorsement than he received in the December 1998 presidential elections (56%).

The electoral results further indicate that Chávez garnered a strong mandate in Congress.  The two key forces in the Chávez coalition, his own party, 5^th Republic Movement (MVR, Movimiento Quinta República) and the Socialist Movement Party (MAS, Movimiento al Socialismo) obtained 58.2% of the representatives in the new 165-member National Assembly, 14 representatives shy of a two-thirds majority needed to approve constitutional changes and just three representatives short of the three-fifths majority required to approve enabling laws, which grant the president special authority to govern by decree.

All of the traditional parties lost ground to Chávez’ forces in the National Assembly.  The Democratic Action Party (AD, Acción Democratica) dropped from being the largest force in terms of total representatives in both chambers under the previous legislature (31.0%) to the second spot in the new unicameral National Assembly with just 20.0%.  Christian-democratic COPEI (Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente) took the biggest beating of the opposition, seeing its representation decline from 13.0% to just 3.0%.  Former key political forces such as Convergencia and La Causa R failed to garner even 2.0% of the vote.

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