Nasry Asfura, the candidate backed by US president Donald Trump, and his rival Salvador Nasralla, also from the right, remained in a tight battle on Monday for victory in Honduras’ presidential election. Asfura, 67, is leading Nasralla by two-tenths of a percentage point after 56% of the tally sheets were counted, according to the National Electoral Council (CNE).
Sunday’s elections were marked by Trump’s threat to cut aid to the impoverished Central American country if his chosen candidate did not win, and they leave left-wing ruling party candidate Rixi Moncada (Libre) a distant third. Asfura, of the National Party (PN), has 40% of the vote against 39.8% for Nasralla, a popular 72-year-old television presenter running for the Liberal Party.
More than 20 points behind is the leftist lawyer Moncada, 60, who had said she would only recognize the final count, a process that could take days. The tally is advancing slowly. On the eve of the vote, Trump warned that Washington would not “waste” resources on Honduras if Asfura, known to Hondurans as “Papi a la orden” (Daddy at your service), did not prevail.
Nasralla has said he is confident he will move ahead in the count once results from some provinces come in. “It is impossible to determine the winner with the data we have,” said political analyst Carlos Cálix. In this country with a history of electoral fraud and coups, Hondurans were deciding whether to renew their trust in their first left-wing government or follow the path of Bolivia and Argentina, whose president Javier Milei also endorsed Asfura.
“Whoever wins should try to think of the country beyond their own benefit and see it as more than just a bag of money to plunder,” said Michelle Pineda, a 38-year-old shopkeeper. Nearly 6.5 million Hondurans were called to pick Xiomara Castro’s successor in a single round, as well as choose deputies and mayors for four-year terms. The electoral authority has not yet released turnout figures.
After a campaign marred by advance fraud accusations, election day unfolded calmly, according to the OAS observer mission. The United States said Sunday it was “closely” following the vote.
The shadow of Venezuela
Asfura is seeking the presidency for a second time after losing in 2021 to Castro, while Nasralla is running for the third time. Bursting into the campaign at the last minute, Trump said “Tito” Asfura is the “only friend of freedom,” and warned that if he lost, Honduras would fall under the control of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and “his narco-terrorists.”
Trump labeled Moncada a “communist” and called Nasralla “almost a communist” for having been part of the current government, from which he later broke away. Trump went further on Friday by announcing that he would pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who governed with the PN from 2014 to 2022 and has been serving a 45-year sentence in the United States for drug trafficking since 2024.
The leftist candidate said Sunday that the pardon for the “drug kingpin” was “arranged” by local elites, while Asfura insisted it had “nothing to do with the elections.” The polarization marking this contest is a legacy of the 2009 coup against president Manuel Zelaya, Castro’s husband, who was toppled by the right after drawing closer to Venezuela.
The challenges: poverty and security
In a gesture to Washington, Asfura and Nasralla have both pledged to move closer to Taiwan, after Castro restored relations with China in 2023. While busy attacking each other, the candidates barely addressed Hondurans’ daily hardships.
“We need more security. There are no jobs and people look for opportunities in other countries,” complained Fren uancis Rodas, a 29-year-old homemaker in a neighborhood of the capital. Honduras is heavily dependent on the United States: 60% of its 11 million inhabitants live in poverty, and remittances from migrants account for 27% of GDP.
Manuel Orozco, an analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue, said that the main challenge for the next government is employment, with informality at 70%. In one of the most violent countries in the region, where institutions have been infiltrated by drug trafficking, the elections were held under a partial state of emergency imposed by Castro in 2022.
Valeria Vásquez, of Control Risks, also cited as a challenge the need to remedy the “weakness” of politicized institutions and the tight control the government exerts over the prosecutor’s office and the armed forces.
