CARACAS -(Dow Jones)- A majority of Venezuelans plan to vote against President Hugo Chavez's proposal to change the constitution to allow him to run for reelection indefinitely, according to the latest results from polling firm Datanalisis.
The most recent poll by the Caracas-based firm shows that 52% of people surveyed said they intend to vote against the constitutional amendment proposed by Chavez to eliminate presidential term limits, while 38% said the would vote in favor. The remaining said that they had not decided how they would vote or that they didn't know. The study had a 2.7% margin of error.
In his 10 years in power, Chavez "has not faced an uphill electoral battle with these odds," said Luis Vicente Leon, a director of Datanalisis, possibly the most highly-regarded polling firm in Venezuela.
Leon said that the results, which were based on a nationwide survey of 1,290 people, were not a guarantee that the constitutional amendment would be defeated.
"There's still a large portion of voters that are undecided and Chavez is not in full-campaign mode yet," he said.
Venezuela's constitution was already changed after Chavez came to power in 1998 to allow him to run for one reelection, which he won in 2006. He's set to leave office in 2013 unless the constitution is changed, something that voters rejected in a referendum in December 2007.
The country's electoral authority is yet to set a date for the vote while Chavez has insisted that he would like it to take place as early as February.
-By Darcy Crowe, Dow Jones Newswires; (58) 212 905 6304; darcy.crowe@dowjones.com
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Publié le 05 janvier 2009 Copyright © 2009 Dowjones