The two right-wing candidates – one supported by Trump – are tied and have obtained 80% of the votes according to preliminary data.
14ymedio/EFE, Tegucigalpa, 1 December 2025 — Three days after Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves’ crushing defeat in the Caribbean islands of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Havana loses another ally, this time in Honduras, where elections were held on Sunday with high voter turnout and decisive results.
Conservative candidates Nasry Tito Asfura, from the National Party – for whom US President Donald Trump asked for votes – and Salvador Nasralla, from the Liberal Party (centre-right), are leading the preliminary count early on Monday morning with a narrow margin in favour of the former, signalling the return of the right to power.
With 44.23% of the votes counted, Asfura had obtained 597,184 votes (40.39%), while Nasralla had obtained 579,626 (39.20%), results that mark a change in trend in Honduras, which has been governed by the left during the last term.
The ruling party candidate, Rixi Moncada, from the left-wing Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre), was relegated to a distant third place with 287,166 votes (19.42%), forcing her leaders to be cautious and asking supporters to remain “ready for battle” until the count is complete.
The first preliminary results took more than an hour to be published by the three councillors of the National Electoral Council.
The first preliminary results took more than an hour to be published by the three councillors of the National Electoral Council (CNE) due to technical problems and the expectant gaze of the hundreds of election observers present in the room.
In a brief and angry message before the first count was known, Asfura demanded that the president of the CNE, Ana Paola Hall, speed up the preliminary report.
“We demand that Ana Paola Hall, I don’t know what she’s waiting for, come out and do her duty. We can’t have a country waiting, on tenterhooks, in darkness. Do it, for the sake of democracy. The law says so. Thank you, Honduras. We are here to serve you, and we stand firm,” said Asfura, who told reporters, “With the help of God and the Honduran people, we are going to win this election,” and warned that “this is not over until the last vote is counted.”
The general elections in Honduras took place on Sunday without major incidents, with minor reports of delays, alleged impediments to observers during the count, and damaged ballot boxes, but with a high turnout of more than 2.8 million voters (out of a total of 6 million eligible voters) at polling stations, according to initial data.
This participation has been applauded by the United States, which is “closely monitoring” the electoral process in Honduras.
In addition to asking for votes for the presidential candidate, Trump promised that if he won, there would be “a lot of support” for this Central American country ravaged by poverty and waves of migration of its nationals to the north, considering it to be the “only true friend of freedom in Honduras”.
With Asfura, Trump also stated that he sees the possibility of “working together to fight the narco-communists” and confront Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
This support from Washington, just days before the elections, came in the form of a future pardon for former president Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022), convicted of drug trafficking in the United States and from the same political party as Asfura.
The American justified the controversial decision on Sunday and claimed, without evidence, that the previous government had “set up” the Honduran. “The people of Honduras really thought they had been set up (…) a trap by the Biden administration, and I looked at the facts and agreed with them,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way back to the US capital.
Trump did not cite any evidence and did not directly blame Biden, but rather the advisers who worked for the Democrat during his presidential term (2021-2025), despite the fact that the case was tried in court.
Trump did not cite any evidence and did not directly blame Biden, but rather the advisers who worked for the Democrat during his presidential term (2021-2025), despite the fact that the case was tried in court. “If someone sells drugs (in a country), that doesn’t mean you should arrest the president and put him in prison for life,” Trump said of the Hernández case.
Hernández was part of a group of individuals investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) since 2013, the year in which he was elected, for activities “related to the importation of cocaine into the United States.” The document was made public as part of the case against the former president’s brother, Juan Antonio Tony Hernández Alvarado, who was sentenced to life imprisonment on charges related to cocaine trafficking to the United States.
With all this, Asfura leads the vote count by a narrow margin over Nasralla, the conservative who remains “optimistic” and hopeful that the results will be reversed to end 16 years of absence of the Liberal Party, but without the support of the United States.
Following the victory of the current president, Xiomara Castro, of the Libre Party, in the last elections, Nasralla held one of the three presidential appointments (vice-president) until April 2024, when he resigned due to confrontations with the president and her husband, Manuel Zelaya, who is also the general coordinator of the political party.
Translated by GH
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