Trump’s pick holds slim lead in Honduras election

AFP/APP

Tegucigalpa: A conservative candidate backed by US President Donald Trump is holding a razor-thin lead in Honduras’s presidential election, according to partial results released Monday by the National Electoral Council (CNE).

Nasry Asfura, 67, has secured 40 percent of the vote and leads right-wing rival Salvador Nasralla by just 0.2 percentage points, with 56 percent of ballots counted.

Both candidates are more than 20 percentage points ahead of Rixi Moncada, 60, of the ruling leftist Libre party, signaling the possibility of another Latin American nation shifting to the right.

The campaign was dominated by Trump’s threat to cut US aid if his preferred candidate Asfura—nicknamed “Grandad”—were to lose. The vote count from Sunday’s election is progressing slowly, and final results may take days to be announced.

Many Hondurans have fled poverty and violence to the United States, including minors escaping forced gang recruitment. But this route has become increasingly difficult under Trump’s strict immigration policies.

In the final days of the race, Trump openly endorsed the former Tegucigalpa mayor, whose campaign slogan was “Grandad, at your service!” His intervention has shaken a contest that remains too close to call in a nation plagued by drug trafficking and gang violence.

Hondurans also voted for lawmakers and hundreds of mayors in an environment marked by deep polarization. Honduras remains one of Latin America’s most violent countries. “If he (Asfura) doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad,” Trump wrote Friday on his Truth Social platform.

‘Not because of Trump’

Trump’s comments were seen as another bold intervention in a foreign election, similar to his backing of Argentine President Javier Milei’s party in recent midterms. Before Sunday’s vote, he also made a surprise announcement that he would pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez—of Asfura’s National Party—who is serving a 45-year US prison sentence for cocaine trafficking.

Some Hondurans welcomed Trump’s involvement, hoping it might help migrants remain in the United States. Others strongly rejected his influence.

“I vote for whomever I please, not because of what Trump has said, because the truth is I live off my work, not off politicians,” said Esmeralda Rodriguez, a 56-year-old fruit seller.

Nearly 30,000 Honduran migrants have been deported from the United States since Trump returned to office in January. The crackdown has deeply affected the country of 11 million, where remittances made up 27 percent of GDP last year.

After casting his vote in Tegucigalpa, Asfura denied that any planned pardon for Hernandez would benefit his candidacy, saying: “This issue has been circulating for months, and it has nothing to do with the elections.”

‘Escape poverty’

Moncada, representing outgoing leader Xiomara Castro’s Libre party, framed the election as a battle between her and a “coup-plotting oligarchy,” referring to the right’s support for the 2009 military ouster of leftist president Manuel Zelaya, Castro’s husband.

Pre-election accusations of fraud from both sides have led to widespread mistrust and raised concerns about potential post-vote unrest.

Long a transit hub for cocaine moving from Colombia to the United States, Honduras has increasingly become a producer as well. Despite this, issues of drug trafficking, poverty, and violence were scarcely addressed during the campaign.

“I hope the new government will have good lines of communication with Trump, and that he will also support us,” said Maria Velasquez, 58. “I just want to escape poverty.”