Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner in Venezuela’s presidential election on Sunday, even as his opponents were preparing to dispute the results, setting up a high-stakes showdown that will determine whether the South American nation transitions away from one party rule.

Shortly after midnight, the National Electoral Council said Mr Maduro secured 51pc of the vote, overcoming opposition candidate Edmundo González, who garnered 44pc. It said the results were based on a tally of 80% of voting stations, marking an irreversible trend.

But the electoral authority, which is controlled by Maduro loyalists, didn’t immediately release the official tallies from each of the 15,797 voting centres nationwide, hampering the opposition’s ability to challenge the results after claiming it had the voting acts for only 30pc of the ballot boxes.

The delay in announcing results — six hours after polls were supposed to close — indicated a deep debate inside the government about how to proceed after Mr Maduro’s opponents came out early in the evening all but claiming victory.

Opposition representatives said tallies they collected from campaign representatives at the polling stations showed Mr Gonzalez trouncing Mr Maduro.

Opposition leaders were already celebrating, online and outside a few voting centres, what they assured was a landslide victory for Mr González.

“I’m so happy,” said Merling Fernández, a 31-year-old bank employee.

“This is the path toward a new Venezuela.We are all tired of this yoke.”

Voters started lining up at some voting centres across the country before dawn Sunday, sharing water, coffee and snacks for several hours.

After voting, Mr Maduro said he would recognise the election result and urged all other candidates to publicly declare that they would do the same.

“No one is going to create chaos in Venezuela,” Mr Maduro said. “I recognise and will recognise the electoral referee, the official announcements and I will make sure they are recognised.”

Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and once boasted Latin America’s most advanced economy. But it entered into a free fall after Mr Maduro took the helm. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that soared past 130,000pc led first to social unrest and then mass emigration.

Economic sanctions from the US seeking to force Mr Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection — which the US and dozens of other countries condemned as illegitimate — only deepened the crisis.

Mr Maduro’s pitch to voters this election was one of economic security, which he tried to sell with stories of entrepreneurship and references to a stable currency exchange and lower inflation rates. 

The International Monetary Fund forecasts the economy will grow 4pc this year — one of the fastest in Latin America — after having shrunk 71pc from 2012 to 2020.

But most Venezuelans have not seen any improvement in their quality of life. Many earn under $200 a month (£155), which means families struggle to afford essential items. 

The opposition tried to seize on the huge inequalities arising from the crisis, during which Venezuelans abandoned their country’s currency, the bolivar, for the US dollar.