For a complex toric variety, we compare the natural inclusion of the group of classes of invariant Cartier divisors into that of Weil divisors on the one hand, and the Poincaré duality homomorphism between the second integral cohomology and the integral homology (with closed supports) in complementary degree on the other. If the variety has finite fundamental group, we prove that the natural "Chern class homomorphism" from the group of classes of invariant Cartier divisors to cohomology and the "homology class map" from the group of classes of invariant Weil divisors to homology are both isomorphisms, thus identifying the inclusion of these divisor class groups with the Poincaré duality homomorphism. Using suitable Kunneth formulae, that yields a result valid in the general case.
These groups of classes of invariant divisors-and hence the corresponding (co-) homology groups-have explicit descriptions in terms of combinatorial-geometric data of the fan that defines the toric variety. As an application, we use these to discuss problems of invariance of Betti numbers for toric varieties.
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