Nicolas Maduro, the handpicked heir of late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, won Sunday's presidential election by a margin of less than 2 percentage points, according to official results, dpa reported.
With more than 99 per cent of the ballots counted, Maduro got 50.76 per cent of the votes to the 49.07 per cent for Henrique Capriles, the candidate of the unified opposition.
Less than 300,000 ballots out of 18.9 million registered voters separated the two candidates.
"These are the irreversible results," Electoral Council president Tibisay Lucena said.
She stressed that the authorities would not have made the results public if the trend could yet change.
"Venezuela has spoken today, and it has spoken loud," Lucena said.
Maduro proclaimed his victory immediately after the announcement.
"Be sure that if the Electoral Council had said a different candidate won I would still be here," he told supporters.