Dec 4 (Reuters) – Results flipped in the contested Honduran presidential election as conservative candidate Nasry Asfura took a slight lead over centrist Salvador Nasralla, with 84.4% of the votes counted.
On Thursday morning the National Party’s Asfura held 40.05%, about 8,000 votes ahead of Liberal Party’s Nasralla, who had 39.75%. Rixi Moncada of the ruling leftist LIBRE Party remained well behind in third place.
“The results will take a few days, so I ask you to remain calm and patient,” Nasralla said on a video he shared on X late Wednesday, when he still held first place.
Since the vote count began for Sunday’s election, Nasralla and Asfura have been vying for the lead with very narrow margins.
The Honduran presidency is decided in a single round. The candidate with the most votes wins even if the margin is narrow or they fall short of an absolute majority.
The fifth day of vote-counting came after a second stoppage in updating the vote tallies on Wednesday, as members of the electoral council blamed the company behind the tabulating platform for the outages.
(Reporting by Laura Garcia and Aida Pelaez-Fernandez; Editing by Daina Beth Solomon)
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