By Fredy Rodriguez and Aida Pelaez-Fernandez
TEGUCIGALPA, Dec 4 (Reuters) – In Honduras, the latest results from Sunday’s presidential election show conservative candidate Nasry Asfura, backed by U.S. President Donald Trump, has inched ahead of his centrist opponent, Salvador Nasralla, with 84.4% of the ballots counted.
On Thursday morning, the National Party’s Asfura held 40.05%, about 8,000 votes ahead of the Liberal Party’s Nasralla, who had 39.75%. Rixi Moncada of the ruling leftist LIBRE Party remained well behind in third place.
The count represents the latest reversal in the results, after Nasralla held a razor-thin lead on Wednesday. The two frontrunners have repeatedly switched places as hand-counted tallies trickled in from across the country, after Monday’s preliminary results showed the two locked in what Honduras’ electoral body deemed a “technical tie.”
RESULTS REPORTING HAS BEEN CHAOTIC
Voting on Sunday was calm and peaceful, according to independent electoral observers. But the subsequent reporting of the results has been chaotic, marred by starts and stops that have intensified frustrations over the tight race.
Members of the electoral council have blamed the company behind the tabulating platform for pauses in the vote count.
Trump has repeatedly waded into Honduras’ election. Ahead of the vote, he strongly backed Asfura, the 67-year-old former mayor of the capital of Tegucigalpa. Then he claimed, without providing evidence, possible fraud in a social media post on Monday night.
Trump also pardoned a former president of Asfura’s National Party: Juan Orlando Hernandez, who had been serving a 45-year sentence in the U.S. after being convicted on drug trafficking and weapons charges.
Despite the charged environment, Tegucigalpa’s streets remained calm on Thursday as citizens awaited results.
“We request calm,” Nasralla said on X on Thursday, but said some records counted during the night had been inflated.
The Honduran presidency is decided in a single round. The candidate with the most votes wins, even if the margin is narrow or the candidate falls short of a majority.
In previous election cycles, contested results have led to mass protests and violent crackdowns by security forces.
(Reporting by Fredy Rodriguez and Laura Garcia in Tegucigalpa and Aida Pelaez-Fernandez in Barcelona; Editing by Daina Beth Solomon, Rod Nickel)
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