Pallade Veneta - Trump-backed candidate holds narrow lead in race for Honduras presidency

Nasry Asfura, 67, had 40 percent of the votes and led Salvador Nasralla by just 0.2 percentage points, with 56 percent of votes counted, according to the National Electoral Council (CNE).

Both candidates were more than 20 percentage points ahead of Rixi Moncada, 60, of ruling leftist Libre party, who was trailing heavily, signaling another Latin American nation poised to swing rightward.

The campaign was dominated by Trump's threat to cut aid if his favored candidate Asfura, who is nicknamed "grandad," were to lose.

The vote count from Sunday's election has progressed slowly, and final results could take days.

Many Hondurans have fled grinding poverty and violence to the United States, including minors fearing forced recruitment by gangs, although this escape route is no longer a viable option under Trump.

In the final days of the race, the US leader threw his weight behind former Tegucigalpa mayor Asfura, whose campaign slogan was "Grandad, at your service!"

That intervention upended a contest that is still too close to call, in a country plagued by drug trafficking and gang activity.

Lawmakers and hundreds of mayors will also be elected in the fiercely polarized nation, which is also one of the most violent in Latin America.

"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 marked another brazen intervention in another country's politics, echoing threats he made in support of Argentine President Javier Milei's party in recent midterms.

Before Sunday's vote, Trump also made the shock announcement that he would pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, of Asfura's National Party.

Hernandez is serving a 45-year prison sentence in the United States for cocaine trafficking and other charges.

Some Hondurans have welcomed Trump's intervention, saying they hope it might mean Honduran migrants will be allowed to remain in the United States.

But others have rejected his meddling in the vote.

"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," Esmeralda Rodriguez, a 56-year-old fruit seller, told AFP.

Nearly 30,000 Honduran migrants have been deported from the United States since Trump returned to office in January.

The clampdown has dealt a severe blow to the country of 11 million people, where remittances accounted for 27 percent of GDP last year.

After voting in the capital Tegucigalpa, Asfura denied that the planned pardon would benefit him, saying: "This issue has been circulating for months, and it has nothing to do with the elections."

- 'Escape poverty' -

Presidential hopeful Moncada, who represents outgoing leader Xiomara Castro's ruling Libre party, had portrayed the election as a choice between her and a "coup-plotting oligarchy."

That was a reference to the right's backing of the 2009 military ouster of leftist Manuel Zelaya, Castro's husband.

Preemptive accusations of election fraud, made both by the ruling party and opposition, have sown mistrust in the vote and sparked fears of post-election unrest.

Long a transit point for cocaine exported from Colombia to the United States, Honduras is now also a producer of the drug.

"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."

C.Grillo--PV