Caracas, Venezuela - Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro won reelection with 51.2% of votes cast Sunday, the electoral council announced, but the opposition said they were the rightful winners of a poll tainted by fraud.

Elvis Amoroso, president of the CNE electoral body, in its majority loyal to the government, told reporters 44.2% of votes had gone to opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia who had been leading in polls.

The 61-year-old Maduro won a third six-year term at the helm of a country where GDP dropped by 80% in a decade, pushing more than seven million of its 30 million citizens to emigrate.

In office since 2013, he is accused of locking up critics and harassing the opposition in a climate of rising authoritarianism.

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Independent polls had suggested Sunday's vote could bring an end to 25 years of Chavismo, the socialist movement founded by Maduro's socialist predecessor and mentor, the late Hugo Chavez.

Gonzalez Urrutia replaced opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on the ticket after she was excluded from the race over accusations of supporting the 2019 coup attempt led by Juan Guaidó.

Machado, who campaigned far and wide for her proxy, refused to accept the result and claimed the opposition had "won" with 70% of the vote.

Sunday's election was the product of a mediated deal reached last year between the government and opposition.

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The agreement led the US to temporarily ease crushing sanctions imposed after Maduro's 2018 reelection, which it rejected as fraudulent. The crippling penalties, which have contributed greatly to Venezuela's economic crisis, were snapped back after Maduro was accused of reneging on agreed conditions.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken responded to election by saying there were "serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people."