April 26 (Bloomberg) -- President Hugo Chavez's refusal to renew Radio Caracas Television's broadcast license next month is opposed by almost 70 percent of Venezuelans, making it the least-popular move of his eight-year presidency, Caracas pollster Luis Vicente Leon said.

Some 69.4 percent of respondents surveyed by Leon's Datanalisis firm said they disapprove of Chavez's pledge to let the television network's license expire, while 16.4 percent said they support it. The survey of 2,000 Venezuelans, conducted between April 9 and April 16, has a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points.

Only Chavez's proposals to use Cuba as an economic and political model for Venezuela have received similarly high levels of opposition, Leon said today in a telephone interview.

Resistance to closing the 54-year-old RCTV network, which draws the largest audience in Venezuela, is due more to a desire for free choice among channels than for free speech, Leon said.

``The level of rejection to this RCTV decision is so high, it's bound to have some impact on his popularity,'' Leon said. ``We can't yet say if that will be large or small.''

Approval ratings for Chavez were at 64.7 percent last month, according to a Datanalisis survey of 1,300 Venezuelans conducted between March 12 and March 23, with a margin of error of 2.7 percentage points.

Venezuelan Information Minister William Lara, who along with Chavez has led the government's verbal crusade against the network, accusing it of biased, anti-government reporting, dismissed the poll's findings as ``venal lies and statistics'' in an e-mailed statement today.

RCTV's most popular programs are the quiz show ``Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'' and the comedy ``Radio Rochela,'' which has been running for 40 years, the Caracas newspaper El Universal reported.

Lara and other government officials say the network failed to cover Chavez's return to power after a 2002 coup, opting to run cartoons instead.

To contact the reporter on this story: Theresa Bradley in Caracas at tbradley7@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 26, 2007 18:58 EDT