Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was supposed to run as the opposition's candidate for president in the July 28 election, before she was barred from doing so. Instead, veteran diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia ran in her place. According to independent exit polling voting machine receipts, Gonzalez Urrutia defeated President Nicolas Maduro. Yet the incumbent was proclaimed the winner of the vote. "Every day that goes by, Maduro is weaker and weaker, and we are going to prevail [in] our fight," Machado declared.