On November 30, Hondurans will vote to elect a new president, all 128 members of the legislature, and all local officials across the country’s 298 municipalities. 

These elections are unfolding in a highly polarized climate, with the ruling LIBRE party candidate and the opposition candidates accusing each other of planning to commit fraud. The organization of the elections has been hampered by multiple delays caused by internal disagreements within the two electoral bodies (the National Electoral Council and the Electoral Justice Tribunal). These issues have contributed to growing distrust in both the electoral authorities and the overall election process.

Broadly, the election will determine whether voters want to see a continuation of President Xiomara Castro’s left-leaning social and economic agenda by voting for LIBRE’s presidential and legislative candidates or whether they prefer to see the country revert to a more conservative agenda by supporting either the Liberal Party or National Party candidates. As we discuss below, there is great uncertainty regarding the potential outcome of these elections due to extremely disparate polling results. 

The following Q and A looks at the key issues that have generated discussion and debate ahead of the election and provides background on the electoral process as well as the internal and external actors that are likely to play a role in its conduct and outcome.

In 2022, Xiomara Castro of the progressive LIBRE party became the country’s first woman president as well as the first presidential candidate in Honduras’s history to be elected on an overtly left-wing platform. Her election marked a sharp break from more than a decade of hard-right National Party rule, which began after a 2009 military coup ousted her husband, then-President Manuel Zelaya, at gunpoint. The administration of Castro’s predecessor, Juan Orlando Hernández (2014–2022), was characterized by a relative decline in social spending, corruption scandals, electoral fraud allegations, widespread human rights violations, and government complicity in drug-trafficking operations. Hernández is now serving a 45-year prison sentence in the US for major drug trafficking.

Castro has increased public investment and social spending. Under her administration, the economy has grown moderately, and poverty and inequality have declined, though both remain high. Despite opposition figures and some US Republicans labeling her a “communist,” Castro’s government has maintained an International Monetary Fund (IMF) program throughout its time in office and received praise from the IMF for its prudent fiscal management. The homicide rate has also dropped to its lowest level in recent history, but violence persists. Human rights groups have criticized Castro for maintaining a prolonged state of emergency in parts of Honduras and for continuing her predecessor’s policy of militarized policing. 

Core elements of Castro’s agenda have stalled — including a UN-backed anti-corruption mission, agrarian and tax reforms, and a truth commission for human rights abuses in the Bajo Aguán region — as a result of internal divisions within LIBRE as well as the party’s inability to form a stable governing coalition in the National Congress, where LIBRE only holds a plurality of seats.

The three leading contenders for the presidency are LIBRE candidate Rixi Moncada, a former finance and defense minister in the Castro administration; Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla, who served as the country’s vice president for the first half of Castro’s term before resigning and joining the opposition; and Nasry Asfura, a former mayor of Tegucigalpa running for the National Party. Unlike in many other Latin American countries, the presidential race will be decided in a single round, and the candidate who receives the most votes will be the winner.

Moncada proposes a continuation of the policies of President Castro, who is constitutionally prohibited from running for reelection. Her agenda centers on what she calls the “democratization of the economy,” which includes expanding access to low-interest credit, implementing progressive tax reforms, strengthening state enterprises, and increasing social security coverage and public investment. Nasralla’s campaign has emphasized the fight against corruption, and he proposes a hard-line security policy akin to that of President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, in addition to electoral reform, a reduction in government spending, stronger relations with the US, and a relaxation of labor laws. Asfura proposes strengthening the armed forces and police, creating “green jobs,” undertaking economic and legal reforms to attract investment, and promoting decentralization by giving municipalities greater control over public resources and services.

Polls have varied significantly in their estimates of voter intentions. Some pollsters, including CID Gallup, report a technical tie among all three contenders, while the Mexican pollster TResearch shows Moncada with a substantial lead. Other polling companies, including several Honduran market research companies like Métrica that have no apparent prior experience in electoral polling, have published results showing Asfura or Nasralla with significant leads.

Given the lack of a clear, common trend across the various polls that have been published, the only certainty is that the election outcome remains unpredictable. An analysis by the Latin American Center for Strategic Geopolitics (CELAG), a regional think tank that monitors electoral trends across Latin America, notes that TResearch’s findings in the 2021 elections proved to be closer to the final results than those of CID Gallup or the Honduran market research firm Paradigma.

Elections in Honduras are overseen, organized, and certified by the National Electoral Council (CNE), an independent three-member board composed of representatives from each major party. The current councillors are CNE President Ana Paola Hall from the Liberal Party, Cosette López from the National Party, and Marlon Ochoa from LIBRE. 

Honduras also has a second independent electoral body, the Electoral Justice Tribunal (TJE). Like the CNE, it consists of one representative from each of the three major parties. It is tasked with resolving electoral disputes, and its current members are TJE President Mario Flores Urrutia from the National Party, Miriam Barahona from the Liberal Party, and Mario Morazán from LIBRE. 

Both electoral bodies have been criticized for lacking independence and impartiality. Their three-member structure, with each seat tied to a major political party, makes them susceptible to partisan influence and — as most decisions are taken by majority vote rather than by consensus — allows two parties to consistently outvote the third.

As in a number of other Latin American countries, the Honduran armed forces are constitutionally mandated to play a key role in electoral logistics. They are responsible for the custody, transport, and safeguarding of electoral materials along with other security-related tasks. For the current elections, however, the CNE has contracted the transportation of electoral materials to a private company instead of relying solely on the military.

Analysts, politicians, watchdog groups, and the president of the CNE have criticized the military’s conduct during these elections, particularly after the head of the armed forces — who is perceived to be aligned with LIBRE — requested that the CNE provide the military with tally sheets on election day to perform an independent count. They argue that this request exceeds the military’s electoral mandate as defined by the constitution.

In addition, the elections will be held during a partial state of emergency, raising concerns from human rights groups that this may impact the vote’s integrity. The government maintains that the state of emergency is limited to specific regions plagued by security issues and that it does not suspend political rights.

Elections in Honduras have been contested in the past — most notably in 2017, when independent and international observers concluded that the results could not be trusted. Many of the transparency and security measures — such as biometric scans and certain features of the preliminary results system (discussed below) — now in place have been introduced in response to the controversy surrounding the 2017 elections.

With over 43 national and 25 international organizations observing the process, these elections will be the most heavily monitored in Honduran history, according to CNE Councillor Marlon Ochoa.

On election day, voters’ identities will be verified through a biometric system that scans their fingerprints and compares them against the National Registry of Persons’ database.

The Preliminary Results Transmission System (TREP), which is expected to deliver the preliminary results on election night, has robust transparency safeguards. The CNE and the political parties will have simultaneous access to the tally sheets, which will undergo three verification checks. At the voting centers, workers will compare the original tally sheets with digital versions produced from scans of the tally sheets, and any corrections they make will be logged. Next, the CNE’s server will automatically compare the original and digital tally sheets again to detect any errors. All tally sheets will then be published, but those with discrepancies will not be included in the preliminary vote count. Starting the morning after election day, the CNE will review all tally sheets once more, and any corrections made must be unanimously approved by the three CNE councillors. These CNE-reviewed tally sheets will form the basis for certifying the final election results, which the CNE has 30 days to complete. 

Nevertheless, delays and other problems during Honduras’s primary elections in March, along with internal divisions within the CNE that have slowed electoral preparations, have further eroded public trust in both the institution and the election as a whole. In addition, the current electoral campaign has been marked by widespread allegations of plans to commit fraud or to subvert a legitimate electoral outcome. 

On November 4, the Organization of American States’ (OAS’s) electoral observation mission expressed concern that electoral authorities must not receive undue pressure. This was quickly seconded by the OAS Secretary General and the US Secretary of State. 

The OAS statements appeared to come in response to two actions taken by Honduran authorities. First, the attorney general announced an investigation into audio recordings of the National Party–affiliated CNE councillor allegedly conspiring to commit fraud and interfere with the election, though the opposition claims that the recordings are AI-generated. The second controversy surrounds an indictment against two opposition-affiliated TJE magistrates, prompting an ongoing impeachment process. They are charged with abuse of authority for issuing a ruling without convening the third magistrate, who is affiliated with LIBRE. The impeachment proceedings are now before the Supreme Court of Honduras.

The credence given to the audio recordings appears to vary depending on political party affiliation. In response to the content, along with reported failures in tests of the TREP system, presidential candidate Rixi Moncada announced that LIBRE will not recognize the TREP’s preliminary results and will instead insist on waiting until all physical voting center tally sheets have been counted.

The opposition also argues that LIBRE refused to extend Congress’s regular session, which ended on October 31, so its majority on the Congress’s nine-member permanent committee — which handles administrative matters when the legislature is out of session — can choose the president in the event of an electoral crisis. LIBRE maintains that the session was not extended due to disagreements over the budget and policy and that the permanent committee cannot pass laws or declare an election winner, a decision that would instead be made by the full Congress in an extraordinary session.

It’s worth noting the varying positions of Honduran civil society organizations. Some organizations, like the Association of Judges for Democracy, have warned that disproportionate and unfounded criticisms of Honduras’s judicial institutions undermine the nation’s democratic institutions. Others — like the Network for the Defense of Democracy, which includes groups such as the Association for a More Just Society and the National Anticorruption Council — have expressed concern that certain practices, including prosecutorial actions and the selective targeting of CNE and TJE officials, amount to intimidation tactics that threaten the legitimacy, transparency, and independence of the electoral process.

The US has been deeply involved in Honduran politics for many decades. In the early 1980s, the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies had a close relationship with the Honduran military dictatorship and used Honduras as a platform to intervene in neighboring countries, particularly Nicaragua, where the US strongly supported the right-wing contra insurgency. In 2009, the US government opposed the return to power of ousted President Manuel Zelaya following a right-wing military coup, effectively ensuring the success of the coup. In 2017, the US administration endorsed Juan Orlando Hernández’s reelection despite credible fraud allegations echoed by independent electoral observers as well as the Honduran constitution’s prohibition on reelection.   

During the current electoral process, several US Republican lawmakers, including Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez, as well as US Attorney General Pam Bondi have warned that LIBRE might commit election fraud, have tried to link the current government to drug trafficking from Venezuela, and have claimed that Rixi Moncada’s campaign is funded by the “Cartel de los Soles” and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The US House Committee on Foreign Affairs Republican majority’s Twitter account has also posted threads demonizing the Castro government and alleging it will rig the upcoming elections. No evidence has been presented to support any of these allegations.

During a recent House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the Honduran elections, Rep. Salazar praised the 2009 coup and, having previously referred to Moncada as a “communist,” stated, “I am not telling you who to vote for. All I am saying is do not elect a communist.” At the hearing, Rep. Joaquin Castro highlighted the conflicts of interest involving one of the witnesses, Carlos Trujillo — President Trump’s former ambassador to the Organization of American States and a lobbyist whose firm previously represented several Honduran companies, including Próspera, which is currently suing the Honduran government. Trujillo’s testimony was heavily biased against the Castro government and Moncada. He also asserts unequivocally that LIBRE is attempting to rig the elections. 

On November 22, echoing the opposition’s claim that LIBRE lawmakers in the permanent committee will try to choose the next president, US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau expressed concern about the elections after speaking with unidentified members of the Honduran business community.

Fearing that any delay could create opportunities to manipulate the vote, opposition supporters have expressed concern that the CNE must quickly announce a winner based on the TREP’s preliminary results on election night. LIBRE supporters, however, have noted that their strongest support comes from rural areas, where communications are less reliable and may be blocked due to geography, infrastructure challenges, or potential human interference. They fear that early results from the oppositions’ urban support base will favor the opposition and prompt rejection of the official results if the trend reverses later. Either scenario could spark demonstrations by candidates’ supporters, increasing the potential for violence. Highlighting the risks, human rights groups note that gangs caused chaos during the 2017 elections.

Ultimately, a widely accepted outcome will depend on election day proceeding smoothly, with transparency measures and logistics functioning without major issues. Even so, LIBRE and the other two opposing parties appear to be highly confident that they will win, and there is a significant risk that each side will refuse to recognize the results if they lose. Given that the election is expected to be very close and that early electoral trends favoring certain candidates or parties may emerge, election watchers should wait until the TREP’s final results are clear before announcing a winner. Depending on how the situation develops, it may be prudent to await the CNE’s official declaration, which can take up to 30 days after the election.

CEPR will be present in Honduras during the elections as accredited electoral observers. This Q and A has been prepared based on research, media monitoring, and discussions with Honduran political parties and civil society organizations.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research promotes democratic debate on issues that affect people’s lives, in the US and other parts of the world. Through rigorous, independent research and analysis we strive to provide the general public and policymakers with the tools to better understand the problems and choices that they face. CEPR is committed to presenting issues in an accurate and understandable manner, so that the public is better prepared to choose among various policy options.