2024 Venezuelan political crisis

The 2024 Venezuelan political crisis was a period of the crisis in Venezuela, aggravated after the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election results were announced. The 2024 election was held to choose a president for a six-year term beginning on 10 January 2025. Incumbent Nicolás Maduro ran for a third consecutive term, while former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia represented the Unitary Platform (Spanish: Plataforma Unitaria Democrática, PUD), the main opposition political alliance, after the Venezuelan government barred leading candidate María Corina Machado from participating.

International monitors called the election neither free nor fair, citing the Maduro administration having controlled most institutions and repressed the political opposition before and during the election. Academics, news outlets and the opposition provided "strong evidence" according to The Guardian showing that González won the election by a wide margin. The government-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) announced results claiming a narrow Maduro victory that were rejected by the Carter Center, the Organization of American States (OAS), and the United Nations. Political scientist Steven Levitsky called the official results "one of the most egregious electoral frauds in modern Latin American history".

A 6 August article in The New York Times stated that the CNE declaration that Maduro won "plunged Venezuela into a political crisis that has claimed at least 22 lives in violent demonstrations, led to the jailing of more than 2,000 people and provoked global denunciation." In the aftermath of the government's announcement of falsified results, protests occurred across the country, as the Maduro administration initiated Operation Tun Tun, a crackdown on dissent, and detained opposition political figures while refusing to relinquish power. Criminalization of protest was widely condemned by human rights organizations. Maduro did not acknowledge the results which showed him losing the election, and instead asked the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ), composed of justices loyal to Maduro, on 1 August to audit and approve the results. On 22 August, as anticipated, the TSJ described the CNE's statement of Maduro winning the election as "validated". On 2 September, an arrest warrant was issued for González, and he left Venezuela for asylum in Spain on 7 September.