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The next leader of Venezuela is essentially a toss up as far as the betting markets are concerned.
Those trading at the prediction market Polymarket have Delcy Rodriguez with a 44% chance to lead the country, opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez at 22% and opposition leader María Corina Machado at 18%. She's seen an 80% decline in trading over the last 48 hours.
Rodríguez has taken the place of her ally President Nicolás Maduro, captured by the United States in a nighttime military operation, and offered “to collaborate” with the Trump administration in what could be a seismic shift in relations between the adversary governments.
Rodríguez served as Maduro’s vice president since 2018, overseeing much of Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy and its feared intelligence service, and was next in the presidential line of succession.
She’s part of a band of senior officials in Maduro’s administration that now appears to control Venezuela, even as U.S. President Donald Trump and other officials say they will pressure the government to fall in line with its vision for the oil-rich nation.
On Saturday, Venezuela’s high court ordered her to assume the role of interim president, and the leader was backed by Venezuela’s military.
Gonzalez became a leading figure in Venezuela’s opposition. From 2013 he was involved with the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) alliance and later the Plataforma Unitaria, the main opposition coalition.
Machado is a Venezuelan politician, activist, and one of the most prominent leaders of the opposition to the current Venezuela regime. She was barred from running in the last election and got behind Gonzalez.
Trump did not publicly endorse Machado as Venezuela’s leader after the U.S. operation. Instead, he suggested she wasn’t the right person to govern Venezuela once Maduro was removed.
Trump himself had actually received 1% backing to become the next ruler of Venezuela on the Polymarket platform. The U.S. president has publicly stated that the United States would "run Venezuela".
- T.C. Jackson, Gambling911.com
