General Election 30 November 2025

On 30 November 2025, Honduras held general elections to choose the President and three vice-presidents as well as all 128 members of the National Congress and local officials. Additionally, 20 members of the Central American Parliament were elected indirectly. The President along with three running mates as vice-presidents are elected in one round by simple majority of votes. The National Congress – a unicameral parliament – is elected through an open-list proportional representation system (NDI report 2025).

Since the constitutional reforms in 2019, the electoral management in Honduras has been overseen by two bodies – National Electoral Council (CNE), responsible for electoral administration, and the Tribunal de Justicia Electoral (TJE), responsible for election-related disputes and justice. Both bodies comprise three members representing three main political parties of Honduras – the National Party, the Liberal Party and Libre (NDI report 2025). Such a composition has received criticism for the lack of independence and impartiality as well as poor coordination and slow decision making. Although most of the decisions are taken by the majority, which allows two parties to outvote the third, intentional absences in TJE before the elections paralyzed the body due to falling short of the required quorum (EU EOM to Honduras 2025; Herrera et al. 2025).

The problems of electoral body composition were evident during the election preparation period. Lack of coordination between members resulted in poor communication about key decisions. Joint press conferences where all three commissioners participated were not common, and the commissioners rather communicated via their personal social media channels, sometimes even presenting conflicting information. Mutual distrust led to the disagreements over the procedures and configuration of the preliminary results management system (TREP). They culminated in a month-long stalemate when the Libre commissioner refused to join plenary sessions. Despite eventual compromise, shorter timeframes had a negative impact on the operational calendar, especially considering that most supplies had to be outsourced through public tendering (EU EOM to Honduras 2025).

Candidate nomination process involved significant shortcomings. Political parties that did not hold primaries and independent candidates were given substantially less time by CNE to submit their nominations. Specifically, the deadline to submit candidacies was 19 May while the candidate nomination regulations were issued only on 17 May. Consequently, five political parties out of 11 officially registered and six independent candidates out of 31 were approved by CNE to stand in the elections (EU EOM to Honduras 2025).

Violence was present during the electoral campaign. At least 67 incidents of violence were reported in the electoral context, with at least 53 victims. The incidents include seven homicides, six attempted murders, 10 other non-deadly physical attacks, and one kidnapping. There were also several cases of symbolic violence, manipulation of judicial processes, and coercion in the electoral process (Cristosal Derechos Humanos & Heinrich Boll Stiftung 2025). In one instance, at least three candidates (two municipal and one congressional) as well as two minors of respectively 5 and 14 years of age were shot at while leaving from a Libre campaign event,  resulting in the death of the five-year-old (Cristosal Derechos Humanos & Heinrich Boll Stiftung 2025; EU EOM to Honduras 2025). Instances of intimidation, harassment or threats by political parties’ militants were reported by EU observers. Candidates faced with difficulties accessing certain urban areas where organized criminal groups exert control (EU EOM to Honduras 2025). To combat criminal gangs and drug traffickers, the government of Honduras declared a state of emergency in most municipalities in 2022, which was still in place during the 2025 electoral campaign (Olson 2025).

The media environment was characterized by hostile rhetoric and disinformation. Critical media was attacked by government officials and major political and institutional actors. The public broadcasters created unequal opportunities as ruling Libre party and its presidential candidate benefited from more airtime and significantly positive coverage compared to other candidates (EU EOM to Honduras 2025). Social media, especially TikTok platform, was widely used but it also became a tool to disseminate narratives that undermined confidence in the electoral process. Disinformation was spread using AI-generated content as well as deepfake videos. In addition, messages frequently featured gender-based insults (EU EOM to Honduras 2025), and women candidates and political actors were subject to systematic and constant digital harassment, defamation campaigns, and misogynistic discourse via social and mass-media. A high level of defamatory and hateful content was documented, including verbal attacks such as referring to female officials or candidates as “mistresses” of current or former officials, labeling them as “hybristophilic,” or portraying them as incapable of performing their jobs due to their “emotional preferences”. Elements of hate speech and practices against the LGBTIQ+ population were also identified, including acts of harassment accompanied by derogatory messages based on the victim's gender or sexual orientation. In particular, homophobic comments were identified coming from groups linked to political parties and directed against international observers and candidates (Cristosal Derechos Humanos & Heinrich Boll Stiftung 2025).

There were allegations of foreign electoral interference. The president of the United States, Donald Trump, backed the candidate of the National Party, Nasry Asfura, and threatened to cut off U.S. financial support to Honduras if he did not win the election. Due to prolonged vote counting, Trump expressed doubts in fairness of the election and even warned of consequences if the preliminary results that indicated Asrufa’s victory by a very narrow margin were to be changed (Garcia & Alexander 2025).

While the main problems during the election day were minor and involved limited preparedness of polling staff and flaws in the implementation of the biometric system used to identify voters (EU EOM to Honduras 2025), key challenges followed the end of the voting. The TREP vote-counting system, which was poorly developed due to delays in signing the contract with the company, failed to process most of the ballots and was later suspended (Abellan et al. 2025). Vote counting continued weeks after the election as hundreds of thousands of ballots had to be counted manually. Due to very close race in the presidential election, issues with processing of the votes cast mistrust among the parties and the public (Garcia & Alexander 2025; Abellan et al. 2025).

The winner of the presidential election, Nasry Asfura, was confirmed by CNE only on 24 December with 40.3 per cent of the votes. Salvador Nasralla, the candidate of the Liberal Party, finished second with only about 26 000 votes fewer, securing 39.5 per cent. The candidate of the incumbent president’s Libre party, Rixi Moncada, received 19.2 per cent (Whitehead 2025; Elecciones Honduras 2025). The parties’ positions in the parliamentary elections mirrored the results above: the National Party won 49 seats, the Liberal Party obtained 41, while Libre secured 35 (La Tribuna 2025). Turnout in this election was 60.2 per cent, which is lower compared to the previous election in 2021 when 68.6 per cent of eligible voters participated (Avila 2025).