WASHINGTON — In a development political analysts are calling “both inevitable and deeply cursed,” imprisoned Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro has rocketed into fourth place in the latest Emerson College poll of likely 2028 Democratic primary voters, trailing only Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (still running), Gavin Newsom, and the persistent gay option.

The results mirror past polls in which despots (deceased or otherwise) have placed high with Democrats.

The 65-year-old former bus driver, who has been held in a high-security wing of the Metropolitan Detention Center Brooklyn since his dramatic extradition in late 2025, now commands 11% support among self-identified “very liberal” Democrats — narrowly ahead of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (9%) and the ghost of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign (7%).

“People are tired of the same old neoliberal millionaires pretending to care about the working class,” said campaign spokesperson and court-appointed translator Maria Gonzalez-Ramirez during a Zoom press conference conducted from the MDC visitor room. “Nicolás has literally eaten arepas while under house-arrest-level sanctions. That’s authenticity you can’t buy — unless you’re buying it with petrodollars, which, to be clear, he no longer has.”

Maduro’s campaign, officially titled “Unidad y Arepas 2028,” has leaned heavily into the candidate’s unique positioning: he is the only contender who can claim both (a) having personally stared down the entire U.S. Treasury Department and (b) currently possessing a Bureau of Prisons-issued jumpsuit that reads “MDC-BK 478-2025” across the back. Buttons reading “He Beat the Sanctions, He Can Beat the Polls” have become surprisingly popular at Brooklyn DSA mixers.

Policy highlights from the candidate’s platform, as relayed through his legal team, include:

• Immediate recognition of the Monroe Doctrine as “problematic colonial literature”
• Replacing the Federal Reserve with a National Bolivarian Crypto-Potato Index
• Free community college for everyone except members of the Lima Group
• A promise to “decriminalize being bad at governing, because frankly we’ve all been there”

Pundits remain divided on the surge’s staying power. MSNBC’s Joy Reid described it as “a cry for authenticity in an inauthentic age,” while Fox News simply played the same thirty-second clip of Maduro eating a cheese empanada in the prison cafeteria on loop for seventeen hours. CNN’s John King, staring at his magic wall like a man who has seen the face of God and wishes he hadn’t, muttered, “The line… just keeps moving up.”

At a recent virtual town hall (conducted via prison-approved tablet with 17-minute delay), Maduro addressed supporters directly:

“Compañeros of the American left, they called me a dictator. They put me in a cage. And yet here I am — polling ahead of the mayor of Los Angeles. If that isn’t democracy, comrades, then I don’t know what is.”

When asked for comment, the Harris campaign issued a terse one-sentence reply: “We welcome a robust primary conversation and wish Mr. Maduro well in all his future legal endeavors.”

With Iowa just twenty-five months away, the Democratic Party now faces its most surreal moment since the 2020 “Stop Cop City” caucus Zoom bombing. Political observers agree on one thing: if Nicolás Maduro somehow wins the nomination, the general election debate stage is going to need significantly more plexiglass than usual.

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