“What’s clear is that these governors won’t be able to govern,” he said.

And if the election is any sign of what lies ahead for the opposition, it will be a rough road.

One of its most popular politicians, Henrique Capriles, was banned by the government this year from participating in politics. A half-dozen other opposition mayors were sentenced to jail this summer, with some fleeing the country afterward.

Venezuela’s electoral commission, controlled by Mr. Maduro’s allies, has printed ballots with the names of opposition candidates who are not running and moved many polling places far from neighborhoods that voted for the opposition in the past.

Even the election’s date was manipulated. Venezuelans have been waiting more than a year to vote for governors since the government abruptly suspended the election last year. It rescheduled the vote for the fall only after the protests dissolved.

“I refer to it as an ‘authoritarian project,’ or a ‘deficient democracy,’” said David Smilde, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group based in the United States. “There is a big gray zone between dictatorship and democracy that Venezuela is in right now.”

Mr. Smilde said the government’s main motivation for even holding the vote at all was to undo Venezuela’s increasing isolation from neighbors.

The day after the new ruling assembly was formed in July, the Trump administration imposed sanctions against Mr. Maduro and eventually banned banks from buying the state oil company’s debt, aside from short term notes of credit.