Venezuela through the polls: Venezuelans trust Chevron more than their own president

For years, it’s been difficult to gauge opinions in Venezuela. Not because there’s any shortage of them, but because expressing one has carried a very high cost. During Nicolás Maduro’s final years in power, polling stopped altogether. Some pollsters had to go into hiding, and people began responding to any political question with “don’t know” or “no answer.”

In recent months, however, new data has begun to emerge from Venezuela. And what it reveals is that Venezuelans today are caught between a hope that has never before surged so quickly and a sense of distrust that refuses to subside. It’s a “vigilant expectation,” as Saúl Cabrera, president of Consultores 21, a firm with 40 years of experience in the country, describes it.

The numbers are not directly comparable, and vary by pollster, but they reveal several common patterns. Opposition leader María Corina Machado remains the undisputed leader, regardless of the survey. Acting President Delcy Rodríguez does not enjoy the confidence of most of her fellow citizens, though roughly a third of Venezuelans still approve of her performance. And the United States and U.S. President Donald Trump have reached unprecedented levels of popularity in a country that spent two decades hearing that imperialism was the enemy. Venezuelans want change, but they also prioritize resolving their economic hardship first.

Polling in Venezuela is generally commissioned privately, with the results circulating among corporations, investment funds, and embassies willing to pay to understand the terrain. Most never appear in the press. And not all polling firms are what they seem. Alongside long‑standing companies, there are others created expressly to produce numbers favorable to the government — firms that appear ahead of an election and disappear once they are no longer needed.

Venezuela has been talking a lot lately about hope — a fragile feeling, built on expectations, but one that, for the first time in months, can once again be measured. In February 2026, ORC Consultores found that 81% of Venezuelans described themselves as hopeful about the country’s future, the highest level in the firm’s entire historical series. In December 2025, when hundreds of U.S. ships were lurking in the Caribbean, that same indicator stood at 51%. The jump happened in a matter of weeks, after January 3, when Maduro was arrested in a U.S. operation.

“The first change we observed over time wasn’t in the polls, but in the phones,” explains Oswaldo Ramírez, director of ORC. “People stopped deleting political messages and started forwarding memes about Maduro. That’s also data.” Ramírez spent almost a month in hiding, accused of being behind the collection of tally sheets to prove the electoral fraud of July 2024, which showed that opposition leader Edmundo González won the election, not Maduro.

Venezuela’s contradictions are also reflected in the numbers. Six out of 10 Venezuelans believe they will live better in the near future. And at the same time, nearly six in 10 rate their current living conditions negatively, according to a late‑April survey by Datanalisis — a private poll to which EL PAÍS had partial access. That paradox — optimistic about the future, pessimistic about the present — is an accurate snapshot of the country’s mood right now.

According to the Datanalisis survey, the most commonly reported emotion is once again hope, at 40%, ahead of frustration and anxiety. But economic pressure has not eased: inflation, devaluation, and low wages account for nearly 80% of responses when people are asked about the most urgent problem. “The economy isn’t just another issue — it’s the lens through which Venezuelans interpret everything else,” says Luis Vicente León, head of Datanalisis.

Venezuelans have two priorities: economic improvement and political change. And the two do not necessarily move together. In the ORC survey, 85% of respondents said economic stabilization should come before an immediate democratic transition. At the same time, 57% said they would not give the current government a chance in the elections even if the economy improves. In the Datanalisis poll, 62% said the economic crisis must be solved first, even if political change takes longer.

“That doesn’t mean they don’t want elections or changes; they do want them, and clearly so,” says Luis Vicente León. “What the study tells us is that they prefer that this process take place under the right conditions.” Nearly half prefer that, before going to elections, a national agreement with rules and guarantees be built, compared with 33% who want elections as soon as possible, even if the agreements are incomplete.

When Consultores 21 asked respondents to choose between democracy and economic stability without democracy, two out of three chose the former. “People realized that economic policy is made by politicians,” Cabrera explains. “They are not separate variables.” According to Cabrera’s figures, two out of three Venezuelans want elections to be called, and three out of four expect them to be held in the short term.

The answers on political leadership leave little room for ambiguity. According to ORC, when asked spontaneously who they would vote for if elections were held this Sunday, 44% answer María Corina Machado without anyone prompting her name. That share is her starting point, not the extent of her support. No other Venezuelan politician comes close: Edmundo González polls at 12%, and Delcy Rodríguez at 8.5%.

The fact that Machado has spent more than a year in hiding and exile without her leadership waning is significant in itself. “We are approaching three decades in which several highly regarded opposition leaders have ended up being swallowed up by political circumstances. This has not been the case with María Corina, at least not yet,” notes Cabrera. He is beginning to see Juan Pablo Guanipa, a close ally of Machado who was recently released from prison, emerge in his surveys as a nascent third option.

Within Chavismo, by contrast, Maduro’s fall did not erode the movement’s existing support. One in four Venezuelans still identifies as Chavista or defends Chavismo. “Chavismo is undergoing a complete transformation,” Cabrera warns.

Another data point captures the country’s mood. When Venezuelans are asked whom they trust to secure their well‑being, oil companies — at 59% — receive more confidence than Trump (52%) or Machado (49%), according to the ORC survey. And, of course, far more than Rodríguez, the president of a country where three out of four citizens do not trust her.

Rodríguez tops the list for total distrust, at 74.4%, while Machado worries 19% and Trump 15%. Other polls confirm the trend: according to Atlas Intel, Rodríguez’s approval has fallen month after month, from 37% in February to 31% in April.

Venezuela’s fate is impossible to predict, but the surveys capture the distrust of a country still governed by the heirs of a revolution that wrecked the economy and repressed its citizens. A revolution that can no longer use anti‑imperialism as its banner, when Venezuelans today place more trust in Trump than in their own president. And more trust in the foreign companies arriving to extract their oil than in any local politician.

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