Conservative Salvador Nasralla leads Honduras presidential vote after pause in results reporting

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TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — A day after Honduran electoral authorities stopped reporting updates to the presidential vote count because of “technical problems,” candidate Salvador Nasralla of the conservative Liberal party had a slight edge Tuesday over Nasry Asfura, the National Party candidate endorsed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

With votes from about 62% of polling places counted, Nasralla had 39.94% to Asfura's 39.83%. Only about 2,000 votes separate the two conservative candidates. Rixi Moncada of the governing democratic socialist LIBRE or Liberty and Refoundation Party, trailed with 19.17% of the vote.

The website Honduran electoral authorities set up to share vote tallies experienced “technical problems” that caused it to crash and leave the public in the dark about the extremely close presidential and other contests, the National Electoral Council said earlier Tuesday.

The website had been updating vote counts since shortly after the close of polling in Sunday's election, but it went down around midday Monday and there had been no official updates of the vote count’s progress until Tuesday afternoon.

When the site went down, only 515 votes separated leader Asfura from Nasralla. Neither of the two top candidates are from the Libre party of incumbent President Xiomara Castro, though Nasralla has been both rival and ally, serving for a couple years as her vice president.

The council said it has asked the contractor running the website to come up with a solution as soon as possible. In the meantime, the council creating a space for media outlets to observe the vote count where it was happening so the public could see what’s happening.

Trump wrote on Truth Social social media platform Monday while the vote count site was down: “Looks like Honduras is trying to change the results of their Presidential Election. If they do, there will be hell to pay!”

The U.S. president had earlier endorsed Asfura, saying he was the only candidate he could work with.

Asfura and Nasralla had filled the official information void with their campaigns’ own numbers, each saying they were favored to win.

Earlier on Tuesday, U.S. officials confirmed that ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year prison sentence for drug trafficking, had been released following his pardon from Trump.