Conservatives ahead of governing party in Honduras presidential vote, as Trump effect debated

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Reyna Vega whips up simple breakfasts of eggs, fried bananas with cream and refried beans with corn tortillas at her two-table eatery in Tegucigalpa’s center.

The 52-year-old said Monday that over the last four years, prices for all of those things have risen — as have prices in most of the world — so she was eager to cast her vote in the Honduran presidential election on Sunday for a man who made her think of better times — the capital’s former mayor, Nasry “Tito” Asfura.

Her support for the National Party’s Asfura — who as mayor paved roads and improved the capital’s infrastructure — was motivated in part by a burning desire to kick out the governing democratic socialist Libre, or Liberty and Refoundation, party.

But she said friends who were vacillating between Asfura and conservative Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla, the man Asfura was tied with Monday in the preliminary results, were swayed in the campaign’s closing days by President Trump’s endorsement of the capital’s mustachioed former leader.

Trump butts in

Trump’s effect and his motivation have been hotly debated in Honduras. Some say that Rixi Moncada, Libre’s candidate, would have suffered even without Trump’s attacks and warning that she would take Honduras down the same path as Venezuela. After all, Trump said the same about Nasralla, and he was only a few hundred votes behind Asfura with ballots from about 57% of polling places counted Monday.

Even with partial results, there seemed to be a greater willingness to see an impact from Trump than there had been even a day before when people cast their ballots.

Juan Carlos Aguilar, director of the nongovernmental organization More Just Society, said he thought Trump’s intervention had drawn Asfura much closer to Nasralla than polling heading into election day had indicated.

His comments “played a transcendental role and made a drastic change between Salvador [Nasralla] and [Nasry] Asfura,” he said.

He saw the effect as being on undecided voters and those who had been thinking about “loaning” their votes to Nasralla, but ultimately went for Asfura instead.

Presidential race tightens

However, it remained unclear if Asfura’s early edge in the preliminary results would hold. He predictably enjoyed heavy support in the capital, whose tallies were among the first to arrive. But as the count inched along, Nasralla pulled even Monday with about 39% of the vote. To win the presidency, a candidate needs only to secure the most votes, even if that is less than 50%.

Ana Paola Hall, president of the National Electoral Council, said via the social platform X on Monday afternoon that the preliminary rapid reporting system that began providing results Sunday night had reached its conclusion with votes from 57% of polling places tallied. Asfura led Nasralla at that point by 515 votes.

Hall said the count would continue, though it was not immediately clear where the advancing results would be available, because the other system’s website appeared to have been taken down. She asked for continued patience as the count continued.

Nasralla expressed confidence that the outstanding votes in the north, where his party is stronger, would eventually overtake Asfura.

Even some who voted for Asfura might be all right with that, because the main goal was evicting Libre from power.

Vega’s son, 32-year-old Eddy Xavier Vega, said “either of the two (Asfura or Nasralla) is good; what we didn’t want was Libre.”

Nostalgia helps National Party

Despite homicides having dropped during current Libre President Xiomara Castro’s term and the economy’s fundamentals having improved, many Hondurans said they felt like their lives had been better under her predecessor, ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández of the National Party.

And that was Trump’s other move. On Friday he announced that he would pardon Hernández, who was serving a 45-year prison sentence in the U.S. for helping drug traffickers move hundreds of tons of cocaine through Honduras to the U.S. while he was president.

That was on voters’ minds too. Jair Ávila, 20, voted for the first time Sunday. He couldn’t remember Asfura’s name initially, but he remembered Hernández’s.

Ávila said Trump’s promise to pardon Hernández factored in his decision, because he remembered life being easier when he was president.

“He gave away houses, the basic market basket [of goods] was cheaper, the gasoline,” Ávila said. “We were better off with him, honestly.”

Concern about Hondurans in U.S.

Trump’s endorsement of Asfura also raised some hopes that it could translate into some protection for Honduran migrants in the U.S. from Trump’s deportation machine if he wins.

Reyna Vega has a lot of relatives in the U.S., many of whom send money to Honduras to help the family still here. “Thank God, none of them have been deported.”

She said she would not mind seeing Hernández return either. “I don’t think he’s going to make the same mistakes he made before,” she said. “I think he’ll come with a different mentality.”

But it was still unclear if or when that would happen.

With the preliminary results still so close, it could be days before an official winner is declared.

And there was still tension around whether Libre would go quietly.

Its candidate, Moncada, was 20 percentage points back on Monday and most considered her out of contention, but she had not conceded, instead telling her supporters to be ready to fight until all of the votes were counted.

Sherman and González write for the Associated Press.