Misconstrued Venezuelan news broadcast fuels election misinformation

As Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and opposition leaders continue to spar over the validity of the country's presidential election results, social media users are sharing an image of a television broadcast they claim proves the vote total adds up to 132.2 percent. This is false; the network's graphic illustrates that a group of smaller parties collectively garnered 4.6 percent of the poll. 

"The official Venezuelan presidential election results add to 132%," says a July 29, 2024 post on X. "All candidates but Maduro and González got 4.6%."

The image in the post, which bears the logo of the news channel Telesur, shows a breakdown of the Venezuelan presidential election results. The top two candidates received a combined 95.4 percent of the vote, while a group of eight smaller parties are each listed with 4.6 percent.

Other posts, including one re-shared by Tesla and X owner Elon Musk, point to another part of the broadcast that shows the top five candidates, claiming the results totaled over 109 percent.

"Major election fraud by Maduro," Musk said July 29.

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Screenshot from X taken July 30, 2024
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Screenshot from X taken July 30, 2024

The same claim has circulated elsewhere on X, Threads, and Reddit -- including in Spanish and Portuguese.

Venezuela's electoral council, largely loyal to the president, declared July 29 that Maduro won another six years in power with 51.2 percent of the vote -- but without providing a detailed breakdown.

The opposition says its own tally of polling station-level results showed its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, a proxy for its popular leader María Corina Machado -- who was blocked from running -- won by a wide margin.   

Maduro faces international pressure with EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell calling for "immediate access to the voting records of polling stations," without which he said: "Election results that have already been declared cannot be recognized." 

The Organization of American States, a regional body, said Maduro's government had applied a "repressive scheme" and found the election featured "exceptional manipulation." 

Thousands of Venezuelans have taken to the streets in protest, at the cost of a dozen lives, according to a local NGO.

However, the National Electoral Council did not publish a vote tally adding up to more than 100 percent.

At a July 29 press conference where the body released the formal results after 80 percent of ballots had been counted, National Electoral Council President Elvis Amoroso said "other candidates" had collectively received 4.6 percent of the vote. He said Maduro and Urrutia's shares were 51.2 and 44.2 percent, respectively (archived here).

The three figures add up to 100 percent -- not 132.2 or 109.2 percent, as the posts claim.

Telesur broadcast the graphics shared online during its July 29 election coverage (archived here).

An article on the Telesur website further details the results, saying in Spanish: "The other eight candidates who participated obtained a total of 462,704 votes, 4.6 percent of the votes cast" (archived here).

AFP contacted Telesur -- which is jointly funded by the Venezuelan, Cuban and Nicaraguan governments -- for comment, but a response was not forthcoming.

AFP has debunked multiple claims about the Venezuelan presidential election in Spanish.

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