The December elections to Venezuela’s National Assembly completely changed the balance of power within the chamber. Where once Chavistas had an absolute majority, this time 112 of the Assembly’s 167 seats were taken by members of a right-wing coalition, the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD).

They were the beneficiaries of an electoral system whose legitimacy their victory demonstrates, despite their repeated claims that Venezuela was a dictatorship.

The victory of the Right was not entirely unpredictable. The Maduro government had been privately discussing the possibility of defeat, though it is unlikely that they anticipated the scale of it. Yet the deeper issue was that President Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013, had won between 53 percent and 63 percent of the vote at every election and referendum from 1999 until his death.