May 2013

A Statistical Note on the April 14 Venezuelan Presidential Election and Audit of Results

The initial results of Venezuela’s April 14 2013 presidential election broke down as follows: 7,575,506 votes for Nicolás Maduro and 7,302,641 votes for opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. Following the announcement of the official results, Capriles asked for a full audit that would go beyond the election night's 'hot audit' of 53 percent of the voting machines used. (This check was done on site and in the presence of community witnesses and observers from both campaigns.) Fair enough, but was Capriles' request appropriate? In performing a statistical analysis of the hot audit, this paper concludes that the odds of Capriles reversing the April 14 results are "far less than one in 25 thousand trillion."

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