2013 Venezuelan Municipal Elections Sunday Dec 08,2013

Municipal elections will be held in Venezuela in 2013 to elect 337 mayors and 2,455 local councillors for their respective 2013-2017 terms

The elections were first scheduled for 14 April 2013. They were rescheduled multiple times; first to 26 May 2013, followed by 14 July 2013

A new date, 8 December 2013, was later announced by the president of the National Electoral Council, Tibisay Lucena 

There are 19,167,416 voters, of which there are 18,952,292 Venezuelan nationals and 215,124 foreigh residents with at least 10 years residency; however, only 19,066,431 voters will be entitled to vote, as 100,985 are Venezuelans residing abroad who have no voting rights for local elections

Voters were electing mayors to 337 municipalities and officials to more than 2,000 city councils

President Nicolas Maduro survived the first major test of his rocky seven month old presidency Sunday, as the ruling Socialists won a majority of votes in Venezuela's local elections

Maduro's Socialists won nearly 50 %of the overall vote against 43% for the opposition, said National Electoral Council (CNE) president Tibisay Lucerna, with nearly all of the polling stations reporting

The Socialists won office in 196 municipalities and the opposition in 53

The poll, seen as a referendum on Maduro -- the handpicked heir of the late leftist icon Hugo Chavez -- confirmed the Socialists as the country's top political force of the land, but also showed a deeply divided electorate.

Venezuela's center-right opposition won in five of the country's most populous cities, including Caracas, the oil city of Maracaibo, and Barinas, Chavez's birthplace.