SNA to address the 2019 Venezuelan Presidential Election

If I had unlimited resources, time, and access to information, I would focus my efforts towards addressing the upcoming Venezuelan Presidential Elections of 2019. My plan would consist in conducting social network analysis in order to provide valuable information to the opposition about what they can do differently when campaigning for the next presidential elections.

Background

I am from Venezuela, a beautiful country in northern South America. Venezuelans have the privilege of having access to beautiful beaches, desserts, snowy mountains, the amazon jungle and incredible waterfalls (including the world’s highest waterfall) without having to leave their country. Venezuela is also a country that is rich in natural resources such as gold, diamonds, natural gas, iron and petroleum. We have the largest oil reserves in the world, which makes us one of the leaders in oil exports globally, resulting in most of our revenue as a country coming from it.

Source: nationsonline.org

The nightmare started when the former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez decided to start a movement and brainwash the Venezuelan people into believing that “Bolivarian Socialism” as he liked to call it, was the solution to all of their problems. He was quick to realize that the majority of the country’s population was represented by the poor, and that they were constantly facing challenges of many sorts in the slums were they lived. His vision was to become the “savior of the poor” by implementing this so called “Bolivarian Socialism”. He sold it by describing it as a way to promote “popular democracy, economic independence, equitable distribution of revenues, and an end to political corruption in Venezuela” (nacla.org). This all sounded great in theory. Every time Chavez explained his “brilliant” plan, the poor’s hope and expectations skyrocketed and even the middle and upper class started to believe that it could be the solution. However, the execution was all wrong. It was so wrong that it continues to haunt the country, even after his death. Instead of being an improved form of Socialism, it all started to look a lot like a dictatorship. His word was the only one that mattered. His supporters were the only ones holding leadership positions in the country, even after popular elections. But how did all of this happen? He had the poor on his side, who again, were majority in the country. He re-organized the slums into different councils of students, women, peasants, workers, etc.., who were trained to cooperate with the cause and stand up against capitalism in exchange for the promise of one day having access to education, healthcare, jobs, houses, appliances, fire arms, or anything they desired. Of course he became their hero and was even seen as a god by some. He nationalized many private companies and left many people bankrupt, he closed and controlled many media outlets and was very aggressive towards those who did not supports his ideals. All done supposedly to help the poor. Corruption increased dramatically in the country, so much that we became one of the countries with the most corrupt governments in the world. Government officials, including the president, decided that it was better to pocket the country’s revenue, and give a little bit to the poor to keep them happy, instead of investing it in infrastructure, healthcare, education. and quickly an entire nation started to crumble. On March 3rd, 2013 Chavez died of Cancer, and the country was left a total disaster. Or at least that’s what we thought. We did not think it could get any worse. But it did. Even though there was a lot of discontent among people of all social classes because of the economic situation, which included inflation, high crime rates, corruption. On April 14th 2013, Nicolas Maduro, who was announced as Chavez’s successor before he died, was elected as the New President of Venezuela by a margin of 1.59% of the votes. Despite the opposition’s efforts to show the voters what the real problem was, the poor still voted for him hoping that he would follow Chavez’s footsteps and this time really help them to overcome poverty. Everyone knew this was not going to be the case, in fact, today Venezuela is at its worst. High Inflation turned into hyperinflation, high crime rates turned into one of the highest murder and violence rates in the world, corruption turned into ruthless theft, shortages of certain products turned into shortages of almost everything. The new elected president used to be a bus driver for crying out loud! No offense to bus drivers, but he was clearly not the best candidate to fix a country that was already in trouble. But why did he still win? Why didn’t the poor get the message? What could the opposition have done differently in order to obtain a different outcome? These are all questions that I am seeking to answer through conducting social network analysis.


Why and How?

By conducting social network analysis, I hope to take a deeper look into the slum’s organizational and social structure in order to identify how information flows, who were the people with highest influence over the rest and how were they related to the election’s outcome.


In order to put my plan into action, I would need to identify a test area or sample to be analyzed. In this case I am going to choose an area in the city where I am from. My hometown is called Ciudad Guayana. It is located in the Southeast of Venezuela, in the State of Bolivar, bordered with Brazil. Ciudad Guayana is divided into 11 municipalities, which are then sub-divided into 11 parishes (church territorial units). For the purposes of this study, I am going to first look into two parishes in order to decide which one to analyze further. One from a middle to upper class area, and one from a lower class area with the idea of comparing their results from the 2013 Presidential election.


The two parishes I have chosen are: Vista al Sol and Cachamay (Shown in the map below)

Source: http://www.alsobocaroni.gob.ve/

The results from the 2013 election for each parish were just as I thought. Cachamay, the parish considered to be inhabited by middle to upper class people showed that the majority of the them voted against Nicolas Maduro, with Capriles (the opposition candidate) winning with 72.52% of the votes. (picture below)

Source: www.cne.gov.ve

On the other hand, the results from Vista al Sol, the lower class parish, showed that 66.30% of the people voted for Nicolas Maduro, allowing him to win. Such results also confirmed my theory that the poor were most likely to vote in favor of the Government. (picture below)

Source: www.cne.gov.ve

After finding out the results from each parish, it is clear that the one to consider for further analysis is Vista Al Sol. In order to find the right people to deliver the opposition’s message to the community, it is important to identify the leaders and influencers of each council. The most effective and efficient way to identify said leaders would be through social network analysis. This way the opposition would gain a more graphic and concrete understanding of the flow of information, informal leaders and possible subgroups within the entire Vista al Sol network.


In order to gather the data needed to conduct social network analysis, surveys will have to be administered in the area to collect the relevant network and attribute data. The surveys would be given to each household in the area to respond and then return to their council leader to then submit to researchers. This would be a rather difficult task to complete and might take some time and persistence, since these communities tend to be close minded and not as open to strangers. However, the study can be done by reaching an agreement with the council leaders to have them overlook the process.


With the purpose of identifying if there are informal leaders and influential people within the Vista al Sol network other than the elected council leaders, the network question would consist of the following:

I. How often do you turn to other people in your community for updates or information about the latest news, events and the needs and wants of the area?

1. Never

2. Sometimes

3. Often 

4. Very Often

II. Please list 3 people that you have turned to for information or help in the last 3 months when facing community related issues or concerns.


The attributes needed would be: gender, age group, political preference, level of education and council they are part of.


Assuming that this information can be collected, the data would have to be dichotomized and then directed centrality and subgroup measures would be performed. For this particular network analysis, it would be important to identify the following:


1. Betweenness: Known as the bridges because most people have to go through them in order to reach the rest of the network. The people with the highest betweenness can be seen as the “bottlenecks or collaborators” within the network.


2. High out/in degree: Those who share information with the most people and those who are the most approached by other people. These people tend to be active influencers. trusted and well known within the network


3. High In Eigen-vector: This refers to those who are connected to the best connected people in the network.


4. Subgroups: It is just as important to use subgrouping techniques such as Girvan-Newman, to identify the different subgroups or councils that might exist in the network.


Such social network analysis would allow the opposition to find out how information flows within the network. By identifying the people with highest betweenness within the network, the opposition leaders will know who to build a relationship with in order to have them serve as middlemen or mediators in the agreements and negotiations with the area’s informal leaders. The people with the highest out degree will represent the leaders to be targeted and convinced to communicate and sell the opposition’s message to the rest of the people in the community. Those with a high in degree will be the people to go to when certain information about the parish is needed, since a lot of people go to them to express their concerns or look for information, they can be assumed to have knowledge about the situation. The people with a high in Eigen vector will represent the people to target and deliver specific messages to so that they can then communicate them to the network leaders in a more subtle way and as a plan B, in case the leaders do not want to cooperate with the opposition directly. Finally, running a subgroup analysis will give the opposition a visualization of the network’s distribution. They will be able to see if the community is in fact divided into councils and if so, how many are there. They would also be able to tell if there are any other relevant subgroups that are better connected in the network, who they are and how they interact.

It is clear that during the Presidential elections of 2013, the opposition failed to communicate their message to the lower class areas. This could be attributed to be heavily campaigning through social media outlets and international media channels that the poor did not have access to. It could also be argued that they failed to visit the slums in order to deliver the message personally. Instead, they focused on campaigning from the outside hoping that the message would be delivered. However, when deciding to follow that approach, they did not make the right connections with the right people within the slums in order to deliver the message for them. All of which resulted in the opposition leader losing the overall presidential election to Nicolas Maduro.

By gathering all of the network information mentioned above, the opposition would be able to better prepare for the next Presidential elections by targeting their money and efforts towards the right people and in the right way so their message can be heard, while still maintaining the tactics used during the 2013 elections to target the middle-upper class people. After collecting the network and attribute data, not only will they be able to identify the people who will play important roles during the implementation of their campaign, but they will also be able to tailor the campaign to better fit the area’s demographics and needs based on the attribute data and the information that will hopefully be gathered from those who know it all (people with high in degree). In the same way, the opposition would have valuable information in their hands that would allow them to create an alternative way to communicate what they want to the people in the slums, since they have limited to no access to local or international media outlets other than the ones owned by the government.

Even though some might argue that it might be too optimistic for me to think that this data can even be gathered, I do believe that social network analysis can help the opposition find the information they so desperately need in order to act upon it and this time allow the country to finally wake up from the nightmare that has been the last 18 years.


Maria Auxiliadora Bertho Abinazar
MIB
Hult International Business School