Perhaps the most surprising thing about the parliamentary elections in Venezuela on 6 December was not that the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) lost control of the national assembly but that it accepted the result with such apparent good grace.
Most analysts had expected the party to do badly. Yet there were concerns about how the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, would react. Before the election Maduro had repeatedly warned of “a massacre” if the opposition emerged victorious.
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