Honduras Again Delays Release of Vote Tally in Presidential Election

Honduras’s electoral council suspended the release of presidential election results for the Nov. 30 election for a second time, citing unscheduled maintenance, as Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla held on to a thin lead over National Party’s Nasry Asfura, who U.S. President Donald Trump has endorsed.

The pause happened without notice, according to Cossette Lopez-Osorio, an electoral council official, who called it “inexcusable” on social media platform X. This latest delay adds to a growing number of issues around the election amid allegations of inefficiency, fraud, and foreign interference.

In the most recent count, which includes 79.97 percent of the overall votes, Nasralla received 40.27 percent, outpacing Asfura’s 39.68 percent by just over 14,000 ballots. Rixi Moncada from the incumbent leftist LIBRE Party is in third place with 19.01 percent.

Early counts showed Asfura leading with only 515 votes, with both holding around 40 percent of the vote. In a subsequent update, Nasralla overtook the lead with 39.96 percent against Asfura’s 39.80 percent, a difference of approximately 8,000 votes.

On Monday, the electoral council called the results a “technical tie” and began hand-counting ballots.

Trump’s public support for Asfura has included allegations that his opponents work for Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and narco-traffickers, against whom the U.S. president has taken an aggressive stance.

Trump has warned that U.S. aid could be cut if Asfura is not victorious.

“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,” he posted on Truth Social on Nov. 28.

Two days earlier, Trump said that “Democracy is on trial” in the Honduran elections.

“The only real friend of Freedom in Honduras is Tito Asfura,” he wrote on the Truth Social platform.

In a Dec. 1 post, Trump accused the country of election tampering, warning that “there will be hell to pay” if it was true.

Moncada, in an interview with Venezuelan news network Telesur, criticized Trump’s comments, calling them “a direct intervention that affects the interests of the Honduran people.”

Ahead of election day, Trump announced a full pardon for former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who received a 45-year sentence in a U.S. drug-trafficking case. The U.S. president said Hernández had been treated “very harshly and unfairly.”

Reuters contributed to this report.