Say Goodbye to Venezuela (UPDATE) Chavez Loses!

UPDATE 12/3 8 am:

Well, things changed after we retired for the evening.

Check out Fausta's, VNV, Gateway Pundit, Michelle Malkin, Devil's Excrement, Riehl World View, Hot Air, Babalu and Assorted Babble for the latest. More reaction via Memeorandum.

HuffPosters are despondent and bash Bush.

AP version here.

CARACAS, Venezuela - Humbled by his first electoral defeat ever, President Hugo Chavez said Monday he may have been too ambitious in asking voters to let him stand indefinitely for re-election and endorse a huge leap to a socialist state.

"I understand and accept that the proposal I made was quite profound and intense," he said after voters narrowly rejected the sweeping constitutional reforms by 51 percent to 49 percent.

Opposition activists were ecstatic as the results were announced shortly after midnight — with 88 percent of the vote counted, the trend was declared irreversible by elections council chief Tibisay Lucena.

Some shed tears. Others began chanting: "And now he's going away!"

Without the overhaul, Chavez will be barred from running again in 2012.

If this report is accurate, Venezuela is headed down the tubes.

Chavez headed for victory: gov't sources

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez appeared headed for victory on Sunday in a referendum on allowing the leftist to rule for as long as he keeps winning elections, government-linked sources said, citing exit polls.

Three exit polls showed Chavez won by between six and eight percentage points in a vote where turnout was low, the two sources said.

If confirmed, it would be by far the slimmest victory margin in the career of a man who wants to rule for life and turn the major oil exporter into a socialist state.

Gateway Pundit has more.

Other's following the referendum include Fausta's Blog,
Venezuela News And Views, Michelle Malkin, Devil's Excrement, Hot Air, Babalu.

UPDATE: Strange events continue. Many sources are saying Chavez won here, but at Devil's Excrement, they say this may not be the case.

8:09 PM From a good source, the Government withdrew its advertising from tomorrow's paper celebrating the victory

8:32 PM Mood shifting towards No win

More again here.

My NO contact (a serious one, I can assure the readers that) wrote me to let me know me that the NO won but the government will announce a SI victory. Chavez has announced that he will call for a press conference for right after the CNE result. The NO camp denounces the Reuters brief which cites only government sources as their basis for the SI victory.

It is quickly becoming a mess.

However there is one thing we can be absolutely sure, all the leaks that went to Reuters will not be investigated and even less punished by the CNE tomorrow, you can be assured to that.