Honduras Declares Nasry Asfura, Trump Ally, Winner of Presidential Election

Nasry Asfura was endorsed by President Trump in a contentious election and vote counting that experienced technical problems and claims of fraud.

Election officials in Honduras on Wednesday declared Nasry Asfura, a former mayor endorsed by President Trump, as the winner of the country’s presidential election, after weeks of delays, technical issues and claims of fraud.

Mr. Asfura becomes the Central American country’s next president by a razor-thin margin after a hard-fought contest between two right-wing candidates that was upended by Mr. Trump’s involvement, and a vote count that took more than three weeks to play out.

It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Asfura’s opponent, Salvador Nasralla, would concede. The election’s many technical problems, painstaking revisions of disputed ballot boxes and days of politicians denouncing the counting process have stoked suspicions of election interference.

On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Nasralla continued posting accusations of fraud to his X account.

But Mr. Asfura said in a post on social media after the results were announced: “Honduras: I’m ready to govern. I won’t let you down.”

At his party’s campaign headquarters, his supporters chanted, “Yes, we did it!”

Outside observers had flocked to Honduras for the election, which they said defied predictions of meddling despite the accusations thrown around by each side.

“I have not found proof of widespread or large-scale fraud,” Héctor Corrales, the director of the Honduran research institute NODO who worked for the European Union’s electoral observer mission, said on Tuesday.

In a statement on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged “all parties to respect ​the confirmed ​results so that Honduran authorities may swiftly ensure a peaceful transition of authority ​to President-Elect Nasry Asfura.”

If the results stand, the election would represent a victory for Mr. Trump, who endorsed Mr. Asfura, a construction entrepreneur, days before the Nov. 30 election. Mr. Trump said on social media that they could work together to confront the “Narcocommunists” — a disparaging term for the left-wing governments in the region, including Cuba’s and Venezuela’s — and bring aid to the country.

Mr. Trump also made a vague threat, saying that if Mr. Asfura didn’t win, “the United States will not be throwing good money after bad.” Since taking office again this year, Mr. Trump has assertively backed certain Latin American leaders as right-wing politicians have gained ground around the region.

Along with endorsing Mr. Asfura, Mr. Trump announced a pardon for an unpopular former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who is a member of Mr. Asfura’s party and who was convicted in 2024 on drug-trafficking charges in the United States. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

For months before the election, Mr. Asfura and Mr. Nasralla had visited Washington, courted Republicans and drummed up fears about a possible victory by the governing left-wing party. They claimed that Honduras could become the next Venezuela — a socialist-led authoritarian state racked by crises, and one that Mr. Trump has pressured with a military buildup in the Caribbean.

Mr. Nasralla appeared to have a lead over Mr. Asfura before Mr. Trump’s last-minute endorsement, both in some polls and according to Honduran political experts. Joaquín Mejía, a Honduran analyst, said the endorsement “awakened a dead man.”

Fearing a worse relationship with the Trump administration would hurt Honduras — one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere and one that relies heavily on money transfers from immigrants in the United States — some Hondurans admitted to switching their vote to Mr. Asfura after Mr. Trump’s endorsement.

The Asfura endorsement came after the candidate hired consultants, including Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump’s former 2020 campaign manager.

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Mr. Parscale advised Mr. Asfura’s campaign on how to use data to target voters. (He denied any role in the endorsement.) And Fernando Cerimedo, a prominent figure in Latin American right-wing circles, became the public face of the Asfura campaign’s claims of victory even as the vote count stalled and tightened, and tried to intimidate Honduran electoral officials on social media.

Days after the vote, when the two candidates appeared to be in a virtual tie, Mr. Trump intervened once more. He said, without offering evidence, that electoral officials were trying to rig the results to benefit Mr. Nasralla, whom he previously accused of being in league with the governing left-wing Libre party.

“If they do, there will be hell to pay!” Mr. Trump wrote online.

Last week, the Trump administration said electoral officials from Libre were impeding the vote count. The State Department revoked the visa of one official and refused the application of another for supposedly undermining democracy in Honduras.

Many Hondurans had been on edge this year as the election approached, with storefronts boarded up and people taking home extra groceries in preparation for possible unrest.

In 2017, a disputed election involving Mr. Hernández, the former leader recently pardoned by Mr. Trump, devolved into mass protests and a crackdown by the military. About two dozen people died in the aftermath of that vote.

This time, Election Day passed peacefully. It was the period after the vote — at one point the count stopped for a week — that paralyzed the country.

Both right-wing candidates had run campaigns focused on how they were different from the governing leftist Libre party, which had sailed to power in 2021 on a wave of anger at the departing president, Mr. Hernández, and his National Party, which many voters said had failed to crack down on corruption and deliver on other promises.

The Libre candidate trailed far behind the two leading candidates in this year’s election results.

Though thin on concrete policy proposals, experts said, both Mr. Asfura and Mr. Nasralla had vowed to address a lack of formal jobs and concerns over crime and corruption.

Before he was endorsed by Mr. Trump, Mr. Asfura was mainly known in Honduras for his infrastructure projects, including in Tegucigalpa, the capital, where he was mayor from 2014 to 2022. Nicknamed Tito and Papi, Mr. Asfura is also known as Tito Puente, a play on the Spanish word for “bridge.”

During his campaign, he projected an approachable, no-nonsense image, dancing with supporters while wearing bluejeans and shouting about how the governing party would steal the elections — a claim that proved unfounded.

Mr. Nasralla, a sportscaster and host of a long-running cash-prize TV show, had served as a vice president in the current Libre government. He broke off last year to join the right-wing Liberal Party for his fourth bid for the presidency.

His campaign, unlike Mr. Asfura’s, made flashy use of symbols connected to Mr. Trump and the global right, including a Tesla Cyber Truck. Mr. Nasralla’s wife, Iroshka Elvir, also was seen wearing a MAGA hat.

Ms. Elvir, a congresswoman and former beauty queen, became one of the most vocal critics of the electoral process after Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Asfura.

Even though Mr. Asfura has been declared the winner, strong doubts have been cast on the election’s integrity because of the extremely thin margin and the public’s deep mistrust in the process, said Mr. Corrales, the electoral observer.

“That will have an impact on the government’s credibility,” he added, referring to Mr. Asfura’s term, which begins in late January. “And that is going to ruin his administration if he doesn’t know how to handle it.”

Reporting was contributed by Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, James Wagner, David C. Adams and Jack Nicas.

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