The contest was primarily between incumbent President Hugo Chávez, and Zulia Governor Manuel Rosales of the opposition party A New Era.

The opposition did not hold a primary, instead, the candidates reached a consensus into backing the governor of the largest state (Zulia), Manuel Rosales.

[4] Civil society organization Súmate recommended procedures for a primary, to be held on 13 August 2006, to choose the opposition candidate for the December 2006 presidential elections.

[5] Among the candidates were: Manuel Rosales (A New Era), Teodoro Petkoff (independent), Sergio Omar Calderón (Copei), Wiliam Ojeda (Un Solo Pueblo), Cecilia Sosa (Federal Republican Party), Enrique Tejera París (independent) and Vicente Brito (Republican Movement).

[5][6] The main candidates, Julio Borges and Teodoro Petkoff, agreed to withdraw from the pre-candidacy to endorse Manuel Rosales, based on his opinion polling support.

The trade union bureau of Democratic Actions, as well as its regional components and many party leaders, announced that they would support the single opposition candidate in the December elections.

María Corina Machado said that the primary "initiative accomplished its goal and that Súmate would continue working to ensure clean elections and respect for citizens' rights".

According to Unión Radio, Lacava added that a campaign theme was to be the "country's freedom to no longer be a North American colony".

[14] The latter being promoted as Mi Negra which is a debit card handed out to the poor with monthly deposits from 20% of oil industry profits.

Nevertheless, a poll shows 59% of the Venezuelan people rejected the Mi Negra program, preferring stable jobs.

[15] According to the Los Angeles Times, Rosales stated that Chávez was vulnerable on his "massive foreign aid programs, government-approved takeovers of land and buildings, and the perception that crime is increasing".

[16] The Associated Press reports that Rosales accuses Chávez of "overspending on a military buildup" and pledged "to use Venezuela's oil wealth to help the poor and improve education and health care", ridiculing Chávez's "claims of a possible war with the U.S." and saying, "Venezuela's real war should be against rampant street crime".

To close his election campaign, Manuel Rosales held a huge final rally in Caracas with an estimate by the Associated Press to be in the hundreds of thousands.

On 17 August 2006, while leading the oath at the national campaign headquarters (Commando Miranda), Chávez acknowledged that 10 million votes would be hard to attain.

is a slogan used by Rosales in launching his campaign, intended to "hit Chávez where the Venezuelan comandante is most vulnerable: his penchant for giving away billions of dollars to foreign countries, while nearly half of the Venezuelan people live in poverty" referring to subsidized oil deals to both Cuba and the United States.

"[27] (*) Technical tie (+) Results are political segmentation, not voter intention[56] (++) This poll was attributed to the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Rafael de la Fuente of BNP Paribas stated "The market expects a Chávez victory, they don't even question it".

[62][63] Polling stations opened at 6:00 a.m. but newspaper El Universal reported that in some electoral centers, voters waited in line since 3:00 a.m.[64] According to the National Electoral Council (CNE) director Humberto Castillo, the turnout in polling stations was massive, and the conditions were "normal" throughout the country.

[68] CNE member Vicente Díaz later reaffirmed that all polling stations without voters in line must be closed, and that no booths under any circumstances could be reopened.

[70] A study conducted by Ezequiel Zamora (former vice president of the CNE), Freddy Malpica (former rector of the Universidad Simón Bolívar), Guillermo Salas (USB professor), Jorge Tamayo (UCV professor), Ramiro Esparragoza (UCV professor), four statistics experts and three computer engineers concluded in January 2007 that the 2006 presidential elections presented "important statistical inconsistencies, despite the fact that the opposition candidate recognized the results".

They released a video that showed energy minister and head of PDVSA, Rafael Ramírez, telling state oil workers to back President Hugo Chávez or to leave their jobs.

President Chávez said he supported the PDVSA director and recommended him to make the same speech to oil workers 100 times a day.

After the polls close at any voting table, the following steps are carried out:[80] Once the tally scrutinization is complete the staff proceeds to perform a random paper ballot audit of 54.31% of the machines.

But he insisted that the two exit poll studies his supporters had made, and the results of the audits, showed a narrower difference between him and Chávez than was reported by Lucena.

[82] Rosales said in his speech that he and his supporters "will be in streets to prove that the results by the National Electoral Council are not correct, that the gap is narrower that what presented.