Presidential candidates in Honduras – Nasry Asfura and Salvador Nasralla were practically tied in the latest vote count on Monday, with both holding just under 40% of the vote in a tight race beset by problems with the results website.
Around midday in Honduras, the electoral authority’s website showed Asfura – the conservative National Party candidate backed by U.S. President Donald Trump – leading Liberal Party candidate Nasralla by just 515 votes. It was not clear how many votes had been counted due to problems with the electoral portal. Rixi Moncada, of the ruling LIBRE Party, was well behind in third with 19% of the vote.
Nasralla posted on X that internal projections put him ahead with 44.6%. “We are not declaring ourselves the winners, just projecting the results that will be fed into the CNE (electoral body) in the next hours,” he said in the post. Members of the National Party criticized Nasralla for not waiting until the final results had been released by the electoral authority.
CNE President Ana Paola Hall, in a post on X, called for calm amid the technical tie and asked for patience as the count continues.
Asfura’s lead has narrowed significantly since the first preliminary results were released on Sunday evening.
Awaiting Final Count
Trump responded to the changing margin by saying it appeared Honduras was “trying to change the results of their Presidential Election,” alleging that the country’s election commission prematurely stopped counting votes.
“If they do, there will be hell to pay! The people of Honduras voted in overwhelming numbers on November 30th,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
Whichever candidate wins the most votes will govern the country between 2026 and 2030. There is no second round of voting.
Outgoing President Xiomara Castro reposted on X a message from her husband, former President Manuel Zelaya, calling for vigilance while “awaiting the final count, with 100% of the presidential ballots tallied.”
Throughout Monday morning, problems with the online portal where results were meant to be updated added to the frustration around the vote. The website appeared to be down for long stretches, with local media criticizing the outage.
Support Of Asfura
In the runup, Trump weighed in on the tightly contested race to throw his support behind Asfura, 67-year-old former mayor of Tegucigalpa, in a series of social media posts, saying he can work with him to counter drug trafficking and that “if he doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad.”
On Friday, Trump also said he will grant a pardon to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who is serving a 45-year prison sentence in the U.S. for drug trafficking and firearms charges. Hernandez, who led Honduras from 2014-2022, was also from the National Party.
Argentine President Javier Milei threw in his lot with Asfura as well, saying on social media that “he is the candidate who best represents opposition to the leftist tyrants who destroyed Honduras.”
Both Asfura and Nasralla have said they may resume diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which were severed in 2023. Such a move would mark the biggest diplomatic setback for China in the region for decades.
(with inputs from Reuters)
