For a long long time, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez polled high numbers in opinion polls.

Often it was as high as 70% approval. When I was in Caracas, a prominent think tank analyst pointed out to me that about 7% of the population was and always would be hardcore communist. Another 30% to 40% after that were happy to take handouts in exchange for political support. Another 20% were middle class and detested the Thug who was ruining their country. And there was a remainder in the middle known as ‘ni-ni’s – people who couldn’t stand any politicians no matter who they were. They often overlapped with the handout class.

If you knew anything about Venezuelan politics before Chavez – the corruption, the currency devaluation, the fiscal shenanigans, the lies – you’d understand how the ni-ni’s felt and why there were so many of them. Venezuelans were severely jerked around by their leaders in the pre-Chavez era, paving the way for the rise of the current leftist dictator.

But since the arrival of Zulia-state opposition presidential candidate Manuel Rosales, an authentic democratic alternative from an independent part of the country not affiliated with the old guard Chavez unseated seven years ago, something has shifted the wind.

Suddenly, Chavez has lost those padded middle-region areas of support he had earlier and now seems to be down to the left-leaning hardcore ahead of December’s presidential election. He’s got only about 27% support now, and he may even lose that. So explains pollster Alfredo Keller, whom Daniel Duquenal at Venezuela News & Views assures us from experience is reliable. He’s got all the details and some analysis of his own in this post here.

Alek Boyd at VCrisis has additional thoughts about Chavez’s precipitous fall in the polls, too, in this post here.

Having gone to Venezuela myself, I have always been suspicious of claims about Hugo Chavez’s popularity. I never saw it, except among the rum-swilling red-t-shirted Chavista political operatives at Mayor Juan Barreto’s office. Even they were a sort of joyless lot, they seemed more pleased with their bloodthirstiness than actually happy.

Do these people, standing in line for 8- or 10-hours in the sweltering sun for monthly Chavista handouts, no jobs, look happy?