Venezuela: The Life and Times of the Party System - Political ...

vote. These results seemed to build on the pattern set in 1963 when five strong competitors
divided the vote. COPEI took power in that year, the first time an opposition party had ever
defeated government and entered office in free elections. COPEI’s victory came on a very
narrow plurality, with its perennial candidate (Rafael Caldera) squeaking into office with barely 29
percent of the vote, the smallest winning percentage in modern history.
The 1968 election was a decisive turning point. Although competition remained high in
later years, fragmentation suddenly disappeared. The share of presidential votes going to “Other”
(other than AD or COPEI) dropped from 42.2 percent in 1968 to 12.4 percent in 1973 and since
then has headed down, with AD and COPEI successfully pushing their rivals to the margin.
Electoral fragmentation was not the only thing left behind with the elections of 1968. The
character of viable political parties also changed. The first three national elections under
democratic rule gave substantial place to electoral phenomena, loosely organized political
vehicles gathered around the candidacy of one striking individual. In 1958, this role was filled by
Admiral Wolfgang Larrazábal, popular head of the Provisional Junta that replaced Perez Jimenez.
As noted earlier, Larrazábal went on to found his own party, Fuerza Democrática Popular (FDP),
in 1963, a year that also witnessed the phenomenon of Arturo Uslar Pietri, a well-known writer,
who later founded his own party, Frente Nacional Democrático (FND). These two made their last
stand in 1968 when they joined URD’s declining forces in a coalition that took about 20 percent of
the total vote. Approximately another fifth went to Luis Beltran Prieto, whose Movimiento
Electoral del Pueblo (MEP) emerged that year as a result of AD’s worst and (so far) last division.
Even the former dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez got substantial votes that year, as the Cruzada
Cívica Nacionalista (CCN) elected almost a tenth of the Chamber of Deputies (on the basis of a
slightly smaller popular vote) in his name.
In the decade after 1968, electoral phenomena disappeared, AD rebounded, and COPEI
continued to grow, peaking (in percentage terms) in the 1978 presidential vote (Tables 2 and 4).
That pattern has continued to the present, with competition between AD and COPEI thoroughly
dominating the political scene. Before we comment in detail on the nature of competition
between these two parties, two points are required to set the whole pattern in context.
First, bear in mind that all this has taken place in the context of an expanding electorate
that has more than matched the growth of the population. The number of registered voters has
grown steadily throughout the entire democratic period, although the rate of increase has slowed
lately, showing margins of 31, 25, and 18 percent over the last three recent elections. Turnout is
high, with abstentions dropping steadily from 1958 to 1973, only to rise again in 1978, reaching
over 18 percent in 1988. (See Table 7. We discuss the possible significance of rising abstention
below.) This is no mean accomplishment in a country with such a youthful population and reflects
deliberate and consistent effort.