2017 Honduran general election

← 2013 26 November 2017 2021 →
Registered	6,046,873
Presidential election
Turnout	57.49% ( 1.65pp)
Nominee Juan Orlando Hernández Salvador Nasralla Luis Zelaya [es] Party National Libre–PINU Liberal Running mate Ricardo Álvarez Arias Xiomara Castro Yadira Bendaña Popular vote 1,410,888 1,360,442 484,187 Percentage 42.95% 41.42% 14.74%
Results by department Results by municipality Hernández:     <40%     40–50%     50–60%     60–70%     70–80% Nasralla:     <40%     40-50%     50–60%     60–70% Zelaya:     <40%     40–50%     50–60%     60–70%
President before election Juan Orlando Hernández National Elected President Juan Orlando Hernández National
Parliamentary election
All 128 seats in theNational Congress 65 seats needed for a majority
Party Leader Seats +/– National Reinaldo Sánchez Rivera 61 +13 Libre Manuel Zelaya 30 −7 Liberal Luis Zelaya 26 −1 PINU Guillermo Enrique Valle Marichal 4 +1 APH Romeo Vásquez Velásquez 4 +4 UD Alfonso Díaz Narváez 1 +1 CD Augusto Cruz Ascensio 1 +1 PAC Marlene Alvarenga 1 −12 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Results of the congressional election President of theCongress before President of the Congress after Mauricio Oliva National Mauricio Oliva National

General elections were held inHonduras on 26 November 2017. Voters went to the polls to elect thePresident of Honduras to serve a four-year term, as well as 128 members of the unicameralNational Congress, 20 members for theCentral American Parliament and mayors for themunicipalities of Honduras.

The election was the first after the controversialSupreme Court decision to allow a president to seek re-election,^[1] a controversial development since the mere possibility of changing the constitution to allow for re-election was a primary justification for the2009 Honduran coup d'état. The sitting president,Juan Orlando Hernández had been the favorite going into the elections, but early results showed a significant advantage for his major challenger,Salvador Nasralla. As theSupreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) slowly announced the vote totals, Hernández gained in the vote counts amid numerous irregularities, leading to cries of electoral fraud and protests across the country.^[2] The protests escalated over the next several days as the country awaited final results, and on 1 December, Juan Orlando Hernández's government issued a ten-day curfew to try to control the protests.^[3]

Following the elections, both candidates claimed victory.^[4] On 17 December, twenty-one days after the elections, Hernández was declared the winner by the TSE, which is dominated by Hernández loyalists.^[5][6] TheOrganization of American States (OAS), which conducted independent monitoring of the elections, found widespread irregularities in the conduct of the voting and doubted the validity of the official results. The OAS called for fresh elections.^[6]

Hernández was seeking re-election, having won the 2013 contest againstXiomara Castro andSalvador Nasralla in a controversial election marred by accusations of vote buying, fraud, intimidation, and other irregularities.^[7][8] This time around, Castro'sLibre party united with theInnovation and Unity Party behind Nasralla in the Alliance against the Dictatorship, but concerns over the integrity over the process remained, especially whenThe Economist revealed a recording of what appeared to be a training session for poll workers from Hernández's National Party that included advocating for vote-rigging in five different ways as part of the party's strategy.^[9]

The President of Honduras is elected by plurality, with the candidate receiving the most votes in a single round of voting declared the winner.^[10] The 128 members of the National Congress are elected byopen listproportional representation from 18 multi-member constituencies based on thedepartments ranging in size from one to 23 seats.^[11] Seats are allocated using theHare quota.^[11]

Juan Orlando Hernández of theNational Party, who has held office since winning the2013 election, is the first president in Honduran history running for a second term^[12] since the constitution established in 1982, despite the fact that, Article 374 of theconstitution of Honduras prohibits both presidential reelection and the altering of the article prohibiting reelection.^[13]Manuel Zelaya was ousted by acoup in 2009 for holding theHonduran fourth ballot box referendum, which some have claimed he was using to alter this article of the constitution.^[14] Comments he made shortly before being deposed seem to suggest he did believe the referendum would be effective in such a capacity.^[15] It is important to note that because Zelaya could not run for office in the 2009 election, this change would have been made after he was out of office.^[16][17] Therefore, Zelaya would have only been able to run for reelection in 2013.

The left-wingLibre andPINU parties formed with the centre-rightAnti-Corruption Party the Opposition Alliance against Dictatorship for this election, nominating PAC founderSalvador Nasralla as its candidate.^[18] Former Honduran presidentManuel Zelaya, who was forced out of office in thecoup in 2009, supported Nasralla and acted as a political strategist for the Opposition Alliance's campaign.^[19]

The centristLiberal Party nominated former president of theCentral American Technological UniversityLuis Zelaya [es] as its candidate.^[20]

The President of theSupreme Electoral Tribunal,David Matamoros Batson, stated that the election budget is 1.098 millionHonduran lempiras.^[21] Foreign officials from theUnited States Embassy,Organization of American States, andEuropean Union conductedelection monitoring.^[22]

The polls closed at 16:00 local time (UTC−5) on election day, a change from years past when polls had closed at 17:00.^[23] Supporters of the opposition saw this as an attempt by the TSE, which is effectively controlled by Hernández's National Party, to suppress the vote.^[23] After voting, the TSE planned to begin releasing vote totals as they came out, but suspended the process for close to seven hours.^[23] Before any official results had been announced, Hernández declared himself the victor, and Nasralla followed by also claiming victory.^[23] The following day, the TSE released its first preliminary results: with 57% of the votes counted, Nasralla held a 5-point advantage over Hernández, with 45.17% to Hernández's 40.21%.^[24]

The TSE then halted the count for 36 hours^[25] and announced that final results may not become available until Thursday, 30 November.^[23] Over the course of the week, the TSE released updated vote totals, which saw Nasralla's lead steadily erode and Hernández pull ahead in the vote count.^[25] After the TSE again paused in its vote totals for several hours, claiming to have experienced a glitch in the computer system,^[25] Nasralla denounced the TSE for fraud, declared he would not recognize the results, and urged his supporters to take to the streets, which they did across the country.^[26] According to an analysis done byGeorgetown University professor Irfan Nooruddin for theOrganization of American States, there was a sudden swing in the vote totals after 68 percent of the votes were counted.^[6] Nooruddin concluded that the "differences are too large to be generated by chance and are not easily explicable, raising doubts as to the veracity of the overall result."^[27]

On 30 November, with approximately 94% of the votes counted, Hernández's lead had climbed to 42.92% compared to 41.42% for Nasralla.^[26] On 1 December, the TSE announced that they would give no further results until the TSE had been able to review all of the 1,031 tally sheets which had not been properly filled out by the political parties.^[26][28] The 1,031 tally sheets represent 5.69% of the total vote.^[28] Later that same day, as the TSE was still trying to convoke 60 representatives and four supervisors for both Nasralla and Hernández for the final vote count,^[29] Hernández's cabinet announced a ten-daycurfew from 6pm to 6am to try to calm the violence associated with the protests.^[3]

On 2 December, the Honduran National Roundtable for Human Rights issued a press release, in which it declared that the government actions werestate terrorism against civilians, it warned that the declaration of astate of exception was in order to create repression to ensureelectoral fraud labeling it as illegal after reading several articles of the Honduran constitution.^[30]

As of 2 December, at least 7 people had died in the protests with more than 20 injured.^[31] On the second night of the curfew, thousands of people participated in what is known as "cacerolazos", banging pots and pans in protest.^[32]

As of 15 December 2017, the court had finished a recount of ballot boxes that presented irregularities but had still not declared a winner, and protests continued throughout the country, with 16 deaths and 1,675 arrests, according to Honduras' National Human Rights' Commission.^[33] The court has 30 days from the contest to do so.^[33]

The TSE finally announced a winner on 17 December, giving Hernández the victory with 42.95% of the vote to Nasralla's 41.42%.^[34] The announcement sparked a new wave of protests across the country, with Mel Zelaya announcing a national strike.^[34] The country's two major cities, Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, saw streets blockaded, their main exits blocked, and traffic between them severely reduced.^[34][35]

Organization of American States (OAS) election monitors, in their final report, documented widespread and numerous irregularities in the conduct of the voting and ballot tabulation, and doubted the validity of the official results. OAS secretary generalLuis Almagro issued a statement following the TSE's announcement saying: "Facing the impossibility of determining a winner, the only way possible so that the people of Honduras are the victors is a new call for general elections." Hernández rejected the OAS's position, and his top aide accused of OAS of seeking "to try and steal the election" for Nasralla.^[6]

The Economist analyzed the vote tallies as reported by the TSE and compared that information with census data to analyze the validity of Hernández's explanation for the sudden swing in the vote tallies: that the later votes came from areas with more National Party support.^[36] However,The Economist found that explanation implausible, noting that the swing happened in municipalities, which tend to be small and urban, across the country.^[36] The only other explanation for the swing in the vote tally would be that paper ballots favored Hernández by 18 percentage points where electronic ballots favored Nasralla by 5 percentage points, but, asThe Economist noted, the "odds are that that didn't happen".^[36]

Party		Seats	+/–
	National Party	61	+13
	Liberty and Refoundation	30	–7
	Liberal Party	26	–1
	Innovation and Unity Party	4	+3
	Honduran Patriotic Alliance	4	+4
	Democratic Unification Party	1	0
	Christian Democratic Party	1	0
	Anti-Corruption Party	1	–12
Total		128	0
Source:TSE

Despite concerns over election fraud, the United States recognized Hernández as the winner.^[37] However, in a statement, the U.S. Department of State said that "The close election results, irregularities identified by the OAS and the EU election observation missions, and strong reactions from Hondurans across the political spectrum underscore the need for a robust national dialogue" and called for "much-needed electoral reforms should be undertaken."^[38] Twenty-seven members of Congress sent a letter to President Trump urging him to "join the Organization of American States in calling for new elections, and to stand behind the right of the Honduran people to free and fair elections, in accordance with Honduran law" and expressed alarm at Honduran security forces's use of force against "civilians protesting electoral fraud." In a separate letter, 20 members of Congress wrote to Secretary of StateRex Tillerson expressing concern about the State Department's response to the elections, which the members called "inadequate."^[39]

Canada andMexico also recognized Hernández as the winner.^[39] In a statement, theMexican foreign ministry stated: "Mexico respectfully calls for the democratic institutions, the political forces and the people of Honduras, in a mark of respect and agreement, to definitively conclude this electoral process."^[40]

On 12 March 2018, theUNHuman Rights Office issued a statement about a UN report on Honduras presidential election saying that "members of the Honduran security forces, in particular the military police, usedexcessive – includinglethal – force to control and disperse protests that erupted following November's disputed presidential election". The report "found that at least 22 civilians and one police officer were killed during the protests". The report says, "These cases raise serious concerns and may amount to extrajudicial killings,"^[41]

• Organization of American States — The OAS said that the official results could not be accepted as valid, citing multiple irregularities. The leader of the OAS's election observation mission, former Bolivian PresidentJorge Quiroga, said: "The tight margin, along with the irregularities, errors and systematic problems that have surrounded this election, does not allow the mission to be certain about the results."^[42] When the final results of the presidential election were announced three weeks after voting, the OAS immediately called for new elections.^[43]

• Presidential elections in Honduras
• 2017 elections in Central America
• 2017 in Honduras
• Parliamentary elections in Honduras
• November 2017 in North America

• CS1 maint: archived copy as title
• CS1 Spanish-language sources (es)
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from December 2021
• Pages using embedded infobox templates with the title parameter
• Election and referendum articles with incomplete results