Venezuelans down on president, tolerant of his detractors

Job approval ratings for President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela are lower than any of his peers in Latin America and the Caribbean, while support is high for the rights of regime critics to protest, vote, exercise freedom of expression, and run for public office. On a scale from 0 to 100, Maduro scores an average of 34.3 in presidential job approval, according to the 2014 survey by the Latin American Opinion Project (LAPOP) at Vanderbilt University. That places Venezuela at the very bottom of its Latin American and Caribbean counterparts, with Costa Rica closest to it at 37. Most of the other countries in the region score in the 50s and 60s. More…