(Reuters) Feb 8 – On the outskirts of Venezuela’s main oil city, Maracaibo, members of a local branch of the ruling socialist party went door-to-door in the weeks after U.S. forces captured President Nicolas Maduro, asking residents if they still support the party that has ruled the country for nearly 20 years. The result: About half of the members said they never did it again.
“The answer is very bad,” said one person who helped lead the effort. “There is division between us.”
Although Reuters was unable to independently verify the poll results, the reported drop in support was in line with information gathered from three other parts of the country.
The news agency spoke to 13 party members or local leaders in four states who reported fractures in the United Socialist Party (PSUV) following the US attack. All expressed a deep sense of uncertainty and many expressed concern about their economic future.
The government’s patronage system, which bought a form of party loyalty through financial benefits and food parcels, also appears to be under pressure, with five of the sources saying some contributions have stopped since Maduro’s capture.
Six of the people described mistrust among party loyalists and spreading suspicion of acting president Delcy Rodriguez. Eight said they had seen a drop in participation and support for their local party branch, with two of them estimating a 70% drop in attendance at events such as marches and local gatherings.
Reuters spoke to all who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, with several saying local leaders are encouraging the party faithful to blow on any members who lose faith in the cause, a common tactic for quashing popular dissent in Venezuela. Reuters has withheld the names of the interviewees to protect their safety.
There is no recent public data on party membership, and while Reuters spoke to people who see a decline in participation in four geographically dispersed states, the news agency could not determine what the situation is in all 24 of the country’s states. Most foreign media outlets do not have permanent staff in the country, and Venezuelans are generally reluctant to speak freely with reporters because of potential reprisals.
Neither the Venezuelan government nor the PSUV responded to Reuters requests for comment on eroding support for the party and the degradation of its patronage system.
Calls for national unity in the face of threats to Venezuela have been a constant in Rodriguez’s speeches and public appearances since Maduro’s ouster, and she has also applauded the resilience of the country’s people and promised economic development for all.
Despite holding Maduro’s detention as a kidnapping, Rodriguez appears to be complying with U.S. calls for opening up the country to US oil companies and also met with the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to discuss cooperation against drug trafficking.
Grassroots support for the party would be a problem for Rodriguez. Reuters previously reported that she is already struggling to consolidate her rule by putting allies in positions of power to protect herself from the potential threat posed by Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who also leads the PSUV and has close ties to the security services and the colectivos – the party’s tough motorcycle-riding arm.
Reuters could not directly reach Cabello for comment. All media requests to Venezuelan government officials are handled centrally by the Communications Ministry, which did not respond to questions for this story.
Publicly, Cabello emphasized unity. On January 12, he used his weekly press conference as party leader to emphasize that Rodriguez has “the full support of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.”
Neither US President Donald Trump nor Rodriguez have seriously addressed the election issue since Maduro’s ouster, but the anecdotal drop in local support seems to point to an uncomfortable truth for the PSUV: Maduro’s exit has done little to improve popularity, according to party members interviewed by Reuters.
A local party leader in the northern state of Aragua said the party had no way of growing or winning elections, “even if we had Che Guevara or Gandhi as a candidate.”
“You have a situation where the apparatus of repression is fragmenting and, on top of that, the base that is left of the base is demobilizing. This is a huge challenge for governance,” said Ricardo Rios, head of the Caracas-based analysis and consulting firm Poder & Estrategia.
However, local support for the party may revive. Venezuela has already received $500 million in crude oil sales, and any significant economic improvement could help boost the party’s funding and membership benefits, which have historically helped shore up support, flowing again.
In response to questions from Reuters about the problems facing the Socialist Party, a senior White House official said: “The country is stable, illegal migration has stopped, drug flows have stopped, and the new oil deal will generate economic prosperity for both the Venezuelan people and the American people.”
MEANS OF CONTROL
All of Venezuela’s top officials are long-time members of the PSUV. The party was created in 2007 by merging the disparate political and social forces that brought socialist President Hugo Chavez to power in 1999. That movement also came to bear his name – “Chavismo”.
By 2009, when Chavez poured oil money into social projects, the party claimed more than 7 million members. Although it was founded on the promise of bottom-up policymaking, the party has increasingly become a way to flex presidential power and crush popular dissent, especially after Chavez died and Maduro took over in 2013. The party’s lawmakers have a supermajority in the National Assembly — which is led by Rodriguez’s brother Jorge — and control all but one of the country’s governments.
The reasons given for the decline in local support varied. Some have said that people are wary of being associated with the party if the opposition wins power, fearing some form of punishment. Others said the uncertainty was causing infighting within the party. Almost all spoke of disillusionment and questioned the loyalty of the new leadership to the Chavista cause.
Adding to people’s difficulties are problems with the delivery of party documents, both food and financial, which have hit local branches, five sources said. They said members from three states – Zulia, Aragua and Falcon – are leaving the party because the government has stopped paying bonuses and distributing welfare. Reuters could not independently verify the information it gathered about the blocking of the documents.
Government payments, which through different benefits can reach more than $100 a month for some, are vital income for millions of people in Venezuela, where the monthly minimum wage is less than $1 and poverty is widespread. Also, analysts estimate that inflation has exceeded 400% in 2025.
The complexity of Venezuela’s welfare system, with a range of benefits delivered at different times to different people, meant Reuters did not have a complete picture of the status of all payments and food packages, with some interviewees saying some bonuses were still arriving, while others were not.
A source in Zulia state said 600 people in their district had not received the “family bonus”, a direct social assistance payment of up to $65 given to help with living costs. Three sources also reported that food parcels, known as CLAPs, had not been delivered, with some adding that problems with these deliveries predated Maduro’s capture but had continued since then.
In the municipality of Mara, on the northwestern border with Colombia, a party member said there are still old-school Socialist Party members still committed to the cause and “clapping like seals” but that even they are “coming back because they haven’t been paid their bonuses”.
About 70 percent of local party members and public employees in Mara ignored calls to participate in two recent pro-Maduro marches, the person said, leading bosses to threaten people with firing. Reuters could not determine the size of the marches or whether there were any shootings as a result.
Four of the people Reuters spoke to reported that even motorcycle-riding “colectivos” attended fewer events and were not mobilized to push people to publicly support the government. Their members have been responsible for killing opposition figures and anti-government protesters, according to reports, which Reuters has not independently confirmed, from organizations such as Human Rights Watch.
The person in Mara said many members of the colectivo are now working as mototaxi drivers, failing to show up for the march despite threats from local authorities to revoke their mototaxi work permits, the person said. “They are hiding, feigning illness, and a few have gone to Colombia.”
(Editing by Stephen Eisenhammer and Claudia Parsons)