Bloomberg.com: Latin America
Bloomberg.com: Latin America: "By Guillermo Parra-Bernal
Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez leads his closest rival ahead of the Dec. 3 vote by 35 percentage points in a Zogby International poll, the fourth survey this month suggesting a landslide win for the president.
Chavez had the backing of 59 percent of the 800 people in the Oct. 1-16 survey, compared with 24 percent for opposition candidate Manuel Rosales, Zogby said on its Web site. The poll, commissioned by University of Miami School of Communication, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
The lead in polls reflects Chavez's efforts to push ``for reforms at home to pull Venezuelans out of poverty and to improve the public health care system in the nation,'' Zogby said in a statement on the Web site.
The Zogby poll is the fourth in a week showing voters will re-elect Chavez for a second, six-year term. In September, Chavez said that if re-elected, he would call a referendum in 2010 to change the constitution to allow him to hold office without any term limit.
Since taking office in 1999, Chavez, 52, has used a record oil windfall to spend about half the national budget in healthcare and education services as well as food subsidies for the nation's poor."
