Maduro wins Venezuela presidency

Staff and wires | USATODAY

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan electoral officials say voters have narrowly elected Hugo Chavez's hand-picked successor as president in a razor-close special election Sunday.

Winner Nicolas Maduro campaigned on a promise to carry on Chavez's self-styled socialist revolution, and defeated a two-time challenger who claimed the late president's regime has put Venezuela on the road to ruin.

Officials say Maduro defeated Henrique Capriles by only about 300,000 votes. The margin was 50.8% to 49.1%.

Capriles says he won't accept election result without recount.

Tensions rose after polls closed with both sides suggesting the other was plotting fraud. One of the five rectors of the national election agency said there were irregularities and called for all the votes to be opened and counted.

Capriles and his campaign suggested the government was trying to steal the election.

"They know perfectly well what happened and so do we," he said. "They are misleading their people and are trying to mislead the people of this country."

Capriles suggested fraud in a Twitter message: "We alert the country and the world of the intent to change the will of the people!"

Maduro's Twitter account, with more than 700,000 followers, was hacked Sunday evening as Venezuelans awaited the results.

"Thank you to all of those who follow me on this Twitter account," the hacker tweeted. "I just got 700,000 followers in record time."

Turnout appeared low as Venezuelans headed to the polls for the second time in seven months. Gangs of red-clad motorcyclists rode through the slums of Caracas on Sunday morning calling people to get out and vote for Maduro.

Luis Vicente León, head of Datanalisis, predicts that Maduro will face trouble in the coming months thanks to a litany of woes Chávez left behind as well as competition from within his own party.

"In six months, Maduro is going to be in trouble because he is very different to Chávez," he said.

He also will have to grapple with a country sliding into economic chaos that the bombastic socialist leader largely escaped the blame for prior to his death March 5. Maduro is not likely to be so fortunate, say political analysts here.

"There is going to be a new chapter in Venezuelan politics,'' said Oscar Schemel, who runs the country's Hinterlaces polling agency.

Contributing: Peter Wilson and Girish Gupta, special for USA TODAY; Associated Press