I hope his health is holding up and the cancer treatments are working. He has a huge number of people that depend on him.
"Only six months ago Chávez was, according to pollsters favorable to the opposition, under 40% of approval rating and had only 35% of vote intention – or so they said. The latest polls show just the opposite. The major pollsters such as Hinterlaces, Datanalisis, IVAD and GISXXI all show Chávez way ahead in approval rating – anything from 58% to almost 69% in September and a winning margin of between 53% to 60% depending upon which pollster you believe. The opposition media did not publish the Datanalisis findings which put Chávez way ahead. Datanalisis has never favored the government and so to avoid embarrassment their friend in the media simply hid the results as long as they could.
Chávez popularity is not due to opposition errors. The mass of the voters in Classes D and E are near the social missions and have benefited from them. They know that it is the private sector pushing prices up, not the government. They remember the massacres propagated in the past when certain opposition parties were in power. The excluded are not included and have a decent health service, schools, free university education, subsidized food and authorities that back consumers and not big business or the banksters."
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6552