Here in South Florida, the reaction to the news that President Hugo Chavez was returned to office in Venezuela ran the gamut from disbelief, to feeling that candidate Henrique Capriles made this a closer race than many exiles expected.

Melissa Sanchez writes for El Nuevo Herald and was at Venezuelan restaurants in Doral, where giant TV's had been placed outside to see the election results.

“People were really excited”, said Sanchez. “They were watching the news, they were drinking, they were dancing, they were having a grand old time for hours. This started early afternoon – 6, 7, 8 o’clock. People were outside of these restaurants just celebrating. And I kept asking folks, ’Why are you celebrating? Your guy hasn’t won yet’ – everybody there was clearly going for Capriles – they were just really confident that he was going to win. And then around 10:30 – 10:40, when the announcement came on Globalvision on this huge screen TV that they had outside that Chavez had been reelected, there was a deadening silence. There was a couple of people who screamed, ‘No! No!’ but just right away the heads started turning around and walking out of the parking lot. And within 5-10 minutes, it was nearly cleared.”

Some in the crowds were also pleased that voting appeared to have produced no violence in their home country.