Tegucigalpa (AFP) - A businessman who has US President Donald Trump’s backing for the presidency of Honduras was locked in a “technical tie” with a rightwing TV host after a preliminary vote count, the Central American country’s electoral body said Monday.

Nasry Asfura, 67, led 72-year-old rival Salvador Nasralla by just 515 votes, making it a “technical tie,” National Electoral Council (CNE) head Ana Paola Hall said on X after a partial digital tally of Sunday’s down-to-the wire ballot.

She called for “patience” as the CNE starts a manual count in a vote that left the ruling left-leaning party out in the cold in one of Latin America’s most impoverished and violent countries.

Days before the vote, former Tegucigalpa mayor Asfura won the backing of Trump – as the US president sought to put his finger on the scale of another Latin American election.

Trump has become increasingly vocal about his support for allies in the region, threatening to cut aid to Argentina and Honduras if his picks do not win.

Ally Javier Milei came out on top in Argentina’s mid-term elections, but it is not yet clear if Trump’s endorsement will be enough to secure victory for Asfura, whose campaign slogan was: “Grandad, at your service!”

“If he (Asfura) doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Friday.

- Swing to the right -

The election is a clear defeat for ruling leftists trailing far behind in the vote count.

A swing to the right could help build US influence in a country that under leftist government had looked increasingly to China.

The election campaign was dominated by Trump’s threat and the surprise announcement that he would pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez of Asfura’s National Party.

Hernandez is serving a 45-year prison sentence in the United States, where he had been accused of belonging to one of “the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world.”

Some Hondurans have welcomed Trump’s intervention, saying they hope it meant migrants will be allowed to remain in the United States.

Many Hondurans have fled north to escape grinding poverty and violence, including minors fearing forced recruitment by gangs.

This escape route has become more difficult since Trump’s immigration crackdown, and nearly 30,000 onduran migrants have been deported from the United States since his second term started in January.

The clampdown has dealt a severe blow to the country of 11 million people, where remittances accounted for 27 percent of GDP last year.

- ‘Want to escape poverty’ -

Others reject Trump’s perceived meddling.

“I vote for whomever I please, not because of what Trump has said, because the truth is I live off my work, not off politicians,” Esmeralda Rodriguez, a 56-year-old fruit seller, told AFP.

Michelle Pineda, a 38-year-old merchant, hoped the winner sees the country “as more than just a bag of money to loot.”

Preemptive accusations of election fraud from ruling party and opposition have sparked fears of unrest.

The vote count has progressed slowly, and final results could take days.

Lawmakers and hundreds of mayors were also elected in the fiercely polarized nation, which has swung back and forth between nominally leftist and conservative leaders.

Long a transit point for cocaine exported from Colombia to the United States, Honduras is now also a drug producer.

But the candidates barely addressed drug trafficking, poverty or violence on the campaign trail.

“I hope the new government will have good lines of communication with Trump, and that he will also support us,” said Maria Velasquez, 58.

“I just want to escape poverty.”