After Venezuela’s contested presidential vote, experts say government results are a ‘statistical improbability’

For over a week, Venezuela has been in suspense after a hotly contested presidential election left both the opposition and incumbent President Nicolas Maduro claiming victory.

For over a week, Venezuela has been in suspense after a hotly contested presidential election left both the opposition and incumbent President Nicolas Maduro claiming victory. At CNN’s request, several experts analyzed the results offered by both the government-aligned National Electoral Council of Venezuela (CNE) and the opposition platform Comando Con Venezuela. The experts conclude that the numbers that appear to portray Maduro as the winner are statistically improbable. Data released by the team of opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia match “mathematically and statistically,” the experts say. How verifiable is the data presented by each of the parties? Although Venezuela’s electoral and judicial authorities announced the victory of Nicolás Maduro, they have not shown detailed results and electoral records to support it. In contrast, the opposition published on a website the count of 83.50% of the voting records, a result that has also been verified by civil organizations and independent media outlets. Here is the breakdown: Early in the morning of Monday, July 29, the president of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, proclaimed Nicolás Maduro the winner of the race. According to the data of that organization, with 80% of the records counted, the president had obtained 51.20%, that is, exactly 5,150,092 votes. In that same first bulletin, the CNE gave second place to Edmundo González with 44.2%, exactly 4,445,978 votes.