Early polling results from the Honduran general election show Nasry Asfura, leader of the right-wing National Party, has a very narrow lead.
In their first update on the vote, the electoral council said that the conservative candidate was just ahead of former TV host and vice president Salvador Nasralla, with a little over a third of the ballots counted.
Asfura has been backed by US President Donald Trump, who has threatened to cut financial aid to the Central American nation if his preferred candidate does not win.
Stressing that the results were both “preliminary and partial”, the head of the agency said that the race was on a knife-edge between the two conservative candidates.
Asfura is fractionally in the lead with 40.6% of the vote, while his nearest challenger, Nasralla, is on 38.8%.
In third place is the ruling leftwing Libre party candidate, Rixi Moncada.
There are five presidential candidates, but the poll is essentially being seen as a three-way race.
There are still plenty of ballots left to be counted, and the lead could easily change hands as the votes come in, especially from the more remote communities.
However, so far it has been an encouraging night for Asfura’s supporters, both in Honduras and in Washington.
Voting was extended for an hour in some places where there were long queues, but most Hondurans were able to cast their votes without issue.
The main parties and their candidates have all said they will respect the outcome of the election, although the Libre party has said it will not accept a decision based on preliminary results, only on the final count of the paper ballots.
Read also:
- Actor John Dumelo wins parliamentary election in Ghana
- Harris holds off on election night speech as path to White House narrows
- Presidential Election Tribunal: Prepare for shocking miracle, outcome – Ohanaeze tells Nigerians
Presidents in Honduras can only serve a single four-year term, so the incumbent, Xiomara Castro, who was the country’s first female president when she took office in 2021 for the Libre party, was not on the ballot.
She has backed Moncada to take her place. The 60-year-old lawyer has pledged to protect “natural wealth” from “21st-century filibusters who want to privatise everything” if she wins.
Moncada has also expressed her commitment to combating corruption “in all its forms”.
On Saturday, Moncada accused Trump of meddling in the election, calling his endorsement of her right-wing opponent “totally interventionist”.
Trump had said that the US would be “very supportive” if Asfura won the presidential election, in which voters were also choosing all 128 members of Congress and almost 300 local representatives.
“If he doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad, because a wrong Leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country, no matter which country it is,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.
