Re-Election a Done Deal

Former Presidents may now seek re-election in Honduras.

That is the effect of the Constitutional Branch decision having been published at 5 pm on Friday in La Gaceta, the official publication of the Honduran government.

How the publication of this decision happened is informative: someone fast-tracked the process.

As we previously noted, last Wednesday afternoon the Constitutional Branch debated and passed a resolution unanimously declaring that the portions of the Honduran constitution and penal code that prohibit re-election of Presidents were unconstitutional. All 5 justices signed that decision, which was then leaked to the press by someone employed by the court, an "official" leak. 

Overnight between Wednesday and Thursday the political clamor on both sides of the issue was intense.

Officially, only the National Party is in support of the decision, and it was a National Party ex-president and National Party Congressmen that had challenged the constitutional provision.

This fact becomes important when you realize that the Supreme Court, as constituted, was also selected while the National Party controlled the government, and that the Constitutional Branch contains current president Juan Orlando Hernández's hand picked candidates.  While president of Congress and campaigning for President, Hernández carried out a political purge of dubious legality, removing four of the five justices in the Constitutional Branch, replacing them with his own choices.  He has since replaced that fifth justice, promoting him to the position of Public Prosecutor.

The three other major parties-- the Liberal Party, Libre, and PAC-- have all come out against re-election.  After all, the post-hoc justification offered for the 2009 coup was that somehow through the opinion survey of the Cuarta Urna, Manuel Zelaya Rosales would be able to be re-elected.

Since joining Congress as a Libre Party member, Zelaya Rosales himself has come out against presidential re-election, as has the leader of PAC, Salvador Nasralla.

Thursday morning at 8 am, Justice Lizardo of the Constitutional Branch tried to rescind his signature on the decision.  Such an act, if upheld, would have made the decision not unanimous and would have forced the entire 15 justices of the court to hear the case and issue an opinion.  Lizardo based his recanting on the precarious legal theory that because the Constitutional Branch had not notified the legal representatives of the parties of a decision, he had room to act. This was where matters stood when we last blogged about this.

However, the Secretary of the Constitutional Branch chose to ignore Lizardo's letter notifying him of the change, and went ahead to disseminate the decision to the legal parties.

He also forwarded the decision to the Secretary of Congress, who then quickly forwarded it to ENAG, the government division that prints La Gaceta. Publishing congressional and executive decrees in La Gaceta is what puts them into effect.

The Honduran Congress and Supreme Court have a long-standing dispute about when judicial decisions are effective, with those opposed to some Supreme Court decisions refusing to publish them, to try to ignore them. The Honduran Congress has historically tried to assert control over the constitutional effects of Supreme Court decisions, normally reviews and can even publicly discuss decisions before deciding to forward them to ENAG for publication. No such review was allowed to happen this time, a decision taken by the National Party leaders of Congress.

Everyone agrees that once a judicial decision is published in La Gaceta it is in effect. Normally the publication process takes weeks. ENAG normally publishes things in the order they are received, and it usually has a large backlog of things to publish, so that bills can take a month or more to be published.

Yesterday at 5 pm this decision was officially published in La Gaceta. Someone clearly rushed this one into print.

The upshot: on Thursday Rafael Callejas, who brought the case, convened his campaign to regain the Presidency which he held as a National Party member from 1990 to 1994.

Permanent Parallel Police Forces?

Juan Orlando Hernandez would like to make the Policía Militar de Orden Público (PMOP) a permanent part of Honduras by modifying the Honduran constitution.  He seems to be having problems convincing anyone outside of his party that this is either necessary or a good idea.

In August, 2013 the Honduran Congress, led at that time by Juan Orlando Hernandez, passed a bill (decreto 168-2013) creating the PMOP as an added branch of the Honduran armed forces.  Their mission, as defined, is essentially the same as the National Police.   Rather than being Military Police, that is a police unit located in the military, policing military bases, they are a Militarized Police, soldiers policing the civilian population of Honduras.  The argument urging their creation was that they were needed because one could not have confidence in the National Police because so many of them were linked to organized crime or corrupt in other ways.  At the time the PMOP were created, it was going to take 5 years to review and vet the 12,000 National Police officers. 

Juan Orlando Hernandez now wants to make them permanent, called for from within the constitution, the same way the constitution mandates the existence of the Honduran Armed Forces.  This would make it harder for future legislators to dissolve the PMOP, because a constitutional amendment would require a 2/3 vote of Congress two years in a row.  Hernandez stated:

"For me its important that the Militarized Police be permanent, because today I am the President, but if tomorrow someone else comes along and for ideological reasons dissolves the Militarized Police, we will fall back into the pothole that we all suffered; the Honduran people are not mistaken, if you ask the people who know the subject of security, in which they live all their days, they will tell you of the enormous support that the Militarized Police have."

Hernandez has portrayed opposition to this as either being unmotivated, or linked to support for the drug traffickers.  But Hernandez faces a lot of opposition on this issue.

There's never been a unified opposition in Honduras, especially not since the 2009 coup, but on this issue the political parties not in power, PAC, Libre, PINU, and the Liberals, have all stated their opposition to this move.  Its not that they're against the PMOP, they all have emphasized, its that they are against there existing two parallel police forces in Honduras with the same mission.  Mauricio Villeda, who was the Liberal Party's Presidential candidate in the last election, argues that the PMOP does not need to be added to the Honduran constitution, that as part of the Military it already has all the status it needs.  Villeda pointed out that creating a mandate for the PMOP within the constitution would be like creating a second armed forces, equal to the existing armed forces.  He suggested that this move has more to do with Hernandez wanting to continue in power after his term runs out.

Manuel Zelaya (@manuelzr), leader of Libre, responded on Twitter:

"We are not opposed to the PMOP; yes to them having a parallel mission"

Salvador Nasralla, leader of PAC responded on his TV program saying:

"The Armed Forces are already in the constitution which clearly establishes their obligations, PAC is not against the Militarized Police who should work until the problem of insecurity in this country is resolved.  We are against including [the PMOP] in the constitution and that they convert into a branch loyal to the President to defend him in his eager desire to continue in power clearly expressed in all the media."

The opposition has said it would welcome Hernandez putting this measure to a public referendum, as Hernandez said he might do if Congress fails to act.

The National Party is completely behind Hernandez, but lacks sufficient members in Congress to make this happen without some participation by those in other parties. Oscar Alvarez, head of the National Party caucus in Congress, claimed on Sunday that they had 80 solid votes for the change.  Since there are only 76 National Party members in Congress, that must mean he's managed to convince 4 members of the opposition to vote with them.  However, this bill needs 86 votes to pass to become law.

The current Congress has until January 24, when their session ends, to act.

Hernández Packed Court Goes Political

The Honduran Supreme Court, or more properly, the Constitutional Branch of the Supreme Court, packed with National Party supporters while Juan Orlando Hernández was head of Congress, paid a dividend yesterday by issuing a blatantly political opinion, with no legal argument to back it up.

The case has its origins in the November, 2013 elections for Mayor of San Luis, Comayagua.  Leny Flores Suazo of the Liberal Party was running against Santos Iván Zelaya Chacón of the National Party. 

Both candidates declared themselves the winner, forcing the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) to recount the votes.  But recount in Honduras does not mean what you think it means.  A "recount" in Honduras entails just re-tallying the votes already recording on the tally sheets, not recounting each vote.  The Tribunal Supremo Electoral has maintained that this is the only recount mechanism allowed under its regulations. 

After the recount, the TSE declared the election a tie. 

The candidates then both voluntarily agreed to flip a coin, and whoever won the toss would assume office.  This procedure is called for under Honduran law, if both candidates voluntarily agree to it.  Leny Flores Suazo won the coin toss, and the TSE formally declared him the winner of the election.  He was given paperwork by the TSE naming him the winner.  He was sworn in to office on January 27, 2014.

More than a month later, the National Party candidate appealed to the TSE to declare the election null and void and call for a new election. 

After the TSE turned him down, he appealed to the Supreme Court alleging there was no transparency in the recount process. We tend to sympathize with Zelaya Chacón, because the "recount" is actually pointless, unless you believe a simple math error, rather than the original vote counting, is the problem. But it isn't particularly impenetrable: the TSE adds the numbers a second time.

The Constitutional Branch accepted the case, and following usual procedure solicited an opinion from the Public Prosecutor, Oscar Chinchilla. He is a former Supreme Court justice himself, and the only justice that Hernández kept in the Constitutional Branch when he replaced the other four. 

Despite these ties, Oscar Chinchilla actually concurred with the TSE, arguing that what it did was correct and in accordance with the Electoral Law and the Law of Political Parties, which called for the the coin toss in the case of a tie if both parties agreed to it. There is no dispute of their agreement to abide by the results of the coin toss.

The Constitutional Branch, however, unanimously rejected the Public Prosecutor's opinion and found against the TSE. 

They ruled that the TSE violated the transparency requirements by not immediately consulting the original ballots themselves, rather than the tally sheets, and this failure violated Zelaya Chacón's rights to due process even before the coin toss happened. 

They reportedly wrote, in part:

It is clear to this Constitutional Chamber that the Supreme Electoral Tribunal has violated the political rights of the complainant, adopting resolutions lacking sufficient motivation, lacking the accuracy of the procedure.

But this is where the train left the tracks.  Rather than order the TSE to reconsult the ballots, or to hold a new election for mayor if the original ballots were no longer available (which is likely), they wrote:

Because of all the reasons previously cited, the appeal placed by Mr. Eneas Portillo Cabrera for Mr. Santos Iván Zelaya Chacón, should be granted with the effect that it restores to him full possession and exercise of his political rights, in such a manner that he can exercise for the rest of the time allowed, the job of Mayor of the town of San Luis, department of Comayagua.

The court simply declared Zelaya Chacón the winner, with no constitutional or legal basis provided for such a ruling, and awarded him the election.

Flores Suazo is reported to have said:

So far, it looks like in Honduras, the Supreme Court imposes Mayors [on towns] and sets aside the resolutions of the Election Tribunal.

This is exactly what happened.  Neither every one's due process rights nor the people's votes to determine the outcome of the election were preserved by this ruling.  Why even bother to hold elections?

But that's not the end of this story.  Flores Suazo called on Mauricio Villeda, his party's head of its Congressional delegation.  He has received the unanimous support of the Liberal Party congressional delegation.  Villeda told the press:

The Liberal party was surprised and is angry by the legal decision handed down by the Constitutional Branch of the Supreme Court concerning the case of the Mayor of San Luis.  This election was a tie and was decided by a coin toss.  Afterwards the Constitutional Branch got involved; listen well to what I am saying:  concerning election law, where the highest authority is the Supreme Election Tribunal.   This has surprised us and we don't want a precedent like this to exist in Honduras.

When asked who might have pressured the court, Villeda said:

Possibly various people from the National Party because they have replaced a Liberal Party Mayor.  Sufficient corruption exists already in this National Party government for there to also be corruption in election business.  We must make it clean and only the social communications media can help...

Villeda went on to indicate that this will become an issue in the alliance in Congress between the National and Liberal parties, saying that what the Liberals enabled in Congress, they can just as easily make impossible by breaking the alliance.

The Liberal Party has indicated that once they have had time to study this decision, they will appeal it to the full Supreme Court, but in the meantime, that court has imposed a mayor who was not elected on San Luis, Comayagua, for political, not legal, reasons.

Denial, Anger, and Bargaining: The Liberal Party of Honduras and the Stages of Grief

The Kubler-Ross model of grief has five stages:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.  The Liberal Party in Honduras is somewhere between denial and anger after the November 24, 2013 elections. It seems poised to fragment more as it attempts to come to terms with its losses-- of party members, and of the offices of president and head of congress.

Let's start with denial. The Liberal Party wants to blame LIBRE (and to a lesser extent PAC) for all of the problems that beset Honduran society.  This despite the fact that the National Party has ruled Honduras for the last four years, and the Liberal Party ruled it for seven months after the coup of 2009, in which Liberal party members illegally removed from office the last Liberal Party president.

Which brings us to anger. The 2009 coup ripped apart the Liberal Party. A particularly conservative part of the party took control. The more liberal members of the party largely abandoned it and went on to form the Frente and LIBRE. As the election results from November 2013 show, about half of the supporting electorate left it as well. That has the remaining Liberal Party angry at others who it blames for its diminished position in Honduran politics.

If Kubler-Ross is right, the party needs to move on, and we can expect to see bargaining and depression before they finally reach acceptance.

Bargaining does seem to be the order of the day.

Since 2009 the Consejo Central Ejecutivo del Partido Liberal (CCEPL), which runs the party, has been in conservative hands, with Elvin Santos Lozano, and more recently Mauricio Villeda Bermudez, serving as President of the Executive council.

The Party leadership has not delivered a consistent message to its newly elected Congressional delegation about what it should be doing vis-a-vis the organization of the upcoming session of Congress.

Mauricio Villeda, the losing presidential candidate for the party, told congress members to wait and consult with the people, represented by the municipal mayors who were also elected in November. The municipal mayors have now spoken: they told the Congressional delegation to negotiate with the National Party for a Liberal president of Congress, in return for acting as allies (which would give back to the National Party the voting majority, but not the ability they have had to amend the constitution).

Today, another conservative member of the Party, Benjamin Bogran, who was its coordinator for the past election and is Secretary of the party, advised the party members in Congress to make no alliances, except with the people of Honduras.

Rumors have been flying suggesting that some Liberal Party Congressmen are following the mayor's wishes and talking with the National Party leadership about maybe having a Liberal Party president of Congress in exchange for an alliance between the two parties.

Other factions in the party, such as that represented by Yani Rosenthal, current head of its Congressional delegation, see that as death for the party.

However, the conservative faction that currently controls the Liberal Party blames LIBRE and PAC for all their problems, and sees this as a case of better the devil you know than the devil you don't know.  Bogran said that he could not support an alliance with LIBRE or PAC because "the two of them were conspiring to destroy the Liberal Party".

That's strong, and clearly angry language, but it is also misplaced anger. It is the current leadership of the Liberal Party with its swing to the right of the political spectrum that is responsible for its current loss of significance, but they cannot see it.  They're in denial.

As it struggles to stay significant, and remain a viable party that can attract voters, the best political strategy for the Liberal Party would probably be to not form any alliance, denying both the National Party, and the opposition block formed by LIBRE and PAC the required majority to pass legislation. That would allow the Liberal Party to effectively be the swing vote in policies from all sides.

Bogran seems to be suggesting that something like this actually is the leadership's position when he instructed the Congressional delegation to make no alliances except to do what is best for the Honduran people.  The party seems to be struggling to control its Congressional delegation, with Bogran's words an attempt to reign them back in and under party control.

Will it work?

It hasn't so far.  Almost half the Liberal Party delegation reportedly has had some kind of talks with Juan Orlando Hernández and the National Party directorate about leadership positions for Liberals in Congress.

Villeda seems to have lost control of the directorate of the Party. Vos El Soberano reports that Carlos Flores Facussé (ex-president, owner of La Tribuna)  has taken control of the party behind the scenes, comparing it to the coup Flores Facussé's father staged against Villeda Bermudez's father in 1963.  Reportedly, Flores Faccussé wants the party to be a viable platform from which to launch his daughter on a future presidential campaign. Villeda Bermudez has remained silent, and has been out of the country since before the New Year.

Congress meets to organize on Tuesday, January 21. The new Congress will be sworn in and elect a provisional directorate. That provisional directorate then will name the permanent directorship of Congress, those who will run the body for the next two years.  This must be done by Saturday, January 25.

It should be an interesting week.

The New Political Landscape in Honduras

On Friday, La Prensa connected the dots on the new Congress, quoting statements from Xiomara Castro that suggest LIBRE party leadership is (while pursuing complaints of irregularities and inconsistencies in the official vote count) moving on to the next stage: functioning as a major opposition party in a new, multi-party political landscape.

Castro... pointed out that LIBRE has converted itself into an "important political force" by the number of congress-members that it gained in the unicameral Congress, made up of 128 members.

"We broke the chains of two-party rule, today we are located in the first place, today we have demonstrated that the people fought and will fight for the platform of LIBRE".

As previously noted, the Partido Nacional is projected to have 47 congress members; Libre will have 39; the Partido Liberal will have 26; and Salvador Nasralla's Partido Anticorrupción is expected to have 13 congress members, with the final three falling, one each, to the long-established smaller parties: PINU, the Christian Democrats, and the Partido de Unificación Democrática.

La Prensa adds a contrast with the existing congress that is worth quoting: 

In the present Congress, presided over and absolutely controlled by Hernández, the Partido Nacional has 71 diputados, the Partido Liberal 55, and the other three minority parties shared 12 seats, which had given total control to the conservative binomial that has governed this country for more than a century.

La Prensa is clearly anticipating less total control over the incoming government. That leads us to consider possibilities. LIBRE/PN coalitions seem unlikely (although some press reports earlier this week contained speculation about such an alliance).

We note with interest the opinion of Raúl Pineda Alvarado:

“The ideal is if there exists an agreement with all the political parties, but in any case the natural alliance that the nacionalistas could make is with the Partido Liberal”.

Pineda Alvarado is an ex-congress member for the Partido Nacional. So his comments give us insight into the pragmatic approach we might expect from within his party. His views are echoed by a re-elected Partido Nacional congress member, Antonio Rivera Callejas, who says that the PN could make alliances with the more "democratic" part of the Partido Liberal.

Rivera alludes to the marked division between the present day Liberal congess members, some of whom have stayed in line with the presidential candidate, Mauricio Villeda, and the other that has had more affinity with LIBRE. In the case of the first 26 virtually elected congress members, many of them re-elected, all belong to the first group, that is to say, they are "villedistas”.

Thus, we can expect an attempt to form a coalition of the two traditional parties on one side, with a possible 73 votes giving it a majority in Congress. Partido Nacional commentators add the three single representatives of the small parties, projecting 76 votes.

But that presumes that the entire Liberal party delegation does not see advantage in using its seats more flexibly, to advance its own political projects.

Earlier today, La Prensa suggested that the Partido Anti-Corrupción will form an alliance with LIBRE, in opposition to the two major parties. Despite ideological differences, both parties were mainly motivated by rejection of the existing power structure, which both characterized as fundamentally corrupt. Quoting PAC member (and projected congress member) Virgilio Padilla, La Prensa wrote

We believe that the opposition has to plan a block that can oppose the officialism of the government, and that can only be an alliance constructed with the Partido Liberal, Libre and PAC... We are disposed to establish an alliance that will defend Honduras, an alliance that represents the interests of Honduras, an alliance that will impede intervention in the Judicial Branch, because if the Partido Nacional is going to control all the powers of State, impunity is going to continue.

Salvador Nasralla, the presidential candidate, is said not to have ruled out any alliance, but La Prensa concludes alliance with the Partido Nacional is unlikely.

A three-way alliance would give LIBRE-PAC-Partido Liberal control of congress with 78 votes.

LIBRE and PAC alone would not be able to form a majority, with 52 votes. But they could make it much less simple for the Partido Nacional to pass its legislative agenda, even if they did not have formal support from the Partido Liberal.

Which more or less means that the husk of the Liberal Party, presided over by Mauricio Villeda, may have more power as a losing party than Villeda would have had if elected president with a minority of the national vote.

Exit polls and partial vote counts

As promised, the Tribunal Supremo Electoral broadcast some official results at 9 PM Sunday.

Their summary, with only 24% of the vote counted: 34% Juan Orlando Hernández, 28% Xiomara Castro, 20% Mauricio Villeda, 15% Salvador Nasrallah.

The margin dividing the two top candidates is quite small: 249,660 to 202,501-- so less than 50,000 votes separate LIBRE and the Partido Nacional. The eligible electorate is 5.3 million.

Does this tell us who will win? no, it does not. We do not know which results are included; there is no way to project from likely voting patterns in areas already counted to other similar areas.

Long before the TSE broadcast these partial counts, the Honduran press owned by supporters of Hernández was calling the election for him, based on exit polling by Ingenieria Gerencial. This is the same firm that did polling for the Partido Nacional, those private polls that were alluded to during the campaign but never published.

Meanwhile, LIBRE, relying on other exit polls, saw its candidate emerging as the winner. Without a newspaper ready to declare Xiomara Castro the winner, this would only matter if you were someone (like us) who expects exit polls in Honduras to be inherently unreliable-- and thus expect contradictory results.

Before the TSE circulated their preliminary counts, Xiomara Castro announced that she has been elected; on twitter, the statement read

Con los resultados que he recibido de boca de urna de todo el país, puedo decirles: Soy la Presidenta de Honduras. [With the results that I have received from the edge of the ballotbox from throughout the country, I can say to you: I am the President of Honduras.]

This at least should serve to prevent all the Honduran press from prematurely calling the election for Hernández. Of course, it also has opened Castro up to critique from pundits nationally and internationally.

Meanwhile, Bloggings by Boz tweeted

I analyzed the exit poll data with an adjusted turnout model and got 31.5% to 31% in favor of Hernandez, well within any margin of error.

Except for the absolute number (we were kicking around 34-35% in discussions internally) that sounds about right to us: two diametrically opposed candidates separated by a threadbare margin. Not 6%-- this election should turn on 1-2% of the final vote count.

Last Polls in Honduran Presidential Election: Dead Heat

In Honduras, it is illegal to poll the last month before the presidential election.

Today El Heraldo published the results of the latest, and last, CID Gallup poll in the presidential race.

Their headline: At one month before the elections, JOH one point advantage over Xiomara.

Our headline: Honduran Presidential Election Enters Final Stage in a Statistical Tie.

Based on polling conducted October 6-15, the CID Gallup poll reportedly finds voters who intend to vote breaking 28% for the Partido Nacional (Juan Orlando Hernández), 27% for LIBRE (Xiomara Castro), 17% for the Partido Liberal (Mauricio Villeda), and 9% for the Anti-Corruption Party (Salvador Nasrallah), with 3% each for the candidacies of Andres Pavon and Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, and a reported 3% "do not know/declined to respond".

The absolute numbers in these Gallup polls are always higher than those in other polls, apparently because they are not including the voters who say they may not vote. The trends are clear when we look at the Gallup polling data over time: Nasralla continues to slide down; Villeda has drawn a small number of voters as the Anti-Corruption party declined; but the main increase tracking the decreases in the Anti-Corruption Party is in the institutional Partido Nacional.

There is evidence in this latest poll, as there was previously in the fine grained data from CESPAD, that party affiliation is breaking down. While the Liberal Party was identified as the party affiliation by 22% of those polled, Villeda draws only 17% of the vote. Similarly, while Hernández has a reported 28% of the intended vote, 35% of those polled identified as Partido Nacional members.

CID Gallup doesn't let us speculate on where those other Partido Liberal and Nacional voters are going; CESPAD, though, showed in August that 23% of Liberal Party voters then favored LIBRE, as did 7.6% of Partido Nacional voters not favoring Hernández, with almost the same number then planning to vote for Nasrallah.

El Heraldo's story reports on a number of other polls, some of which, like Paradigma, we have been steadily tracking. These minor polls range from one by Opinión y Analísis that has Hernández at 28.1%, Castro at 23%, and Villeda at 20.1%; to TecniMerk showing Castro winning with 31.9%, Hernández at 22.8%, and Villeda at 13.2%.

While these two minor polls should be questioned due to the wide margins of victory they project, not seen in other polls, they are at least consistent with the other polling that shows LIBRE and the Partido Nacional running head to head. A third minor poll mentioned by El Heraldo, from a firm called Inteligence, seems anything but credible, as it is alone in having the Partido Liberal ahead, with 34.8% of the vote, leading the Partido Nacional at 28.33% and supposedly showing LIBRE in third place at 16,15%. It is almost as if this poll inadvertently reversed LIBRE and the Partido Liberal.

One of these candidates will receive the most votes in November. If election monitoring prevents fraud-- a big if in Honduras-- that same candidate will become the next president.

The current polling data do not allow identification of a clear leader, but do tell us that the traditional two party system has been effectively challenged for the first time in Honduran history: LIBRE and the Partido Nacional are the clear leaders vying for control of the presidency, and one of these did not exist at the time of the last election.

Whatever the outcome, the political landscape has changed in Honduras.

October poll from Paradigma

Presidential poll results just published on the Paradigma website show Partido Nacional candidate Juan Orlando Hernández pulling ahead of LIBRE party candidate Xiomara Castro de Zelaya for the first time in the presidential race, 25.7% to 22.2%. The margin of error is indicated as +/- 1.54%.

Where are these additional voters coming from? Two possibilities present themselves.

The number of voters answering "none of the above" declined 2.8%. At the same time, the number declining to state a preference went up by 1.3%, so it is quite possible that what we are seeing in those two categories is mostly the same pool of uncommitted voters, answering the pollsters slightly differently.

The more interesting possibility we see here is that the slight movement to Juan Orlando Hernández-- if it is real, and not just statistical noise-- is coming from Liberal Party voters who know that Mauricio Villeda is not viable, and find the pro-business, pro-security centrism of Hernández more acceptable than the mild social democratic progressivism of LIBRE. In the latest poll, Villeda declined 1.3%, from 12% in September to 10.7% now.

It isn't particularly surprising that LIBRE's support has flattened-- actually, it is surprising it hasn't been more badly affected by the negative campaigning going on. Whether it is distributing fake LIBRE flyers that make exaggerated claims that LIBRE will make Honduras into another Cuba, or Oscar Alvarez in El Heraldo portraying LIBRE as a threat to people's safety because the party opposes the militarized police, or the republication of Roger Noriega's insane argument that constitutional reform would "open the country to drug trafficking", this is a dirty contest. And then there's the string of assassinations of LIBRE candidates and activists, documented by Rights Action.

So it might be worth making two last points, before this very modest difference between the two lead candidates is interpreted as definitive.

First, the Partido Nacional claims they have a private poll showing their candidate 7 points ahead, not reflected in the latest poll. This is especially interesting because today Oscar Alvarez specifically was quoted as claiming,

various polls such as Paradigma place JOH very far above the candidate Xiomara Castro.

Must be some other "Paradigma", because this one has this race continuing to be closely contested.

The candidate for one of the two traditional parties, enjoying all the advantages of organization, control of the entire government, and benefiting from a media campaign to demonize his competitor, is struggling to pull past the candidate of a new party with none of those advantages.

Second: 30.8% of the respondents still either declined to state a preference or declared an intention not to vote for any of the listed candidates.

So the leading candidate in this historic election remains "None of the Above".

September Poll from Paradigma is out

Paradigma has now published its September polling, and it will come as no surprise: the race is a dead heat between LIBRE and the Partido Nacional. With the margin of error at +/- 2%, Xiomara Castro registers support from 22.8% of those intending to vote; Juan Orlando Hernández stands at 21.9%.

Paradigma concludes their short summary of the election outlook with the statement that

the undecideds continue to be the determining factor for next 24 of November.

That storyline, though, seems less clear when we look at their own data. If we interpret "indecisos" as meant to correspond to the category marked NS/NR in their poll-- which means declined to state/no response-- then in the most recent period, they have settled down at around 11%, up one percent (e.g. within the margin of error) since the previous poll. The big movement there seems to be over; from August to September this category contracted, declining 7%. Yes, the remaining NS/NR could swing the election if they all, or most of them, went for one of the two leading candidates. But when we look at how the 7% decided between July and now, assuming they went for one of the two leading candidates, then we can see that they are splitting fairly evenly: from July to August Castro and Hernández both gained about 3%; Hernández added an additional 2% and Castro registered almost even from August to September, but these fluctuations are within the margin of error.

We still think the election is going to be decided by voters for the Partido Liberal and Anti-Corruption Party: if they stick with their sinking ships, then it is anyone's guess what will happen. But if significant numbers of supporters of either Mauricio Villeda or Salvador Nasralla defect systematically to the leading candidate closest to their own interests, they could change the race completely.

The other notable thing about the new Paradigma poll: for the first time since April, "none of the above" is no longer clearly in the lead. At 21.3%, this third option is also in a statistical tie with Castro and Hernández. That's 6% of voters who have decided between August and September to settle on one of the existing candidates.

Overally, the beneficiaries of movement in the poll are the two traditional parties, the Partido Nacional up 2%, and the Partido Liberal up 2.6%. That may be comforting for those in the traditional power structure who equate any challenge to the two-party dominance of Honduran politics with anarchy. So it is worth underlining how unusual this picture actually is: despite moving up in the polls, the Partido Nacional is just tied with an entirely new party, one that has seen Honduran media working hard to demonize it.

The actual end game here is likely to come down to how the voting process is managed. But whichever party wins this election, the old system is gone.

Honduran Presidential Polling Shows Race Tightening

Honduran news media today published reports based on the latest CID Gallup poll, of a sample of 1220 voters surveyed between September 6 and 12. Reuters reported only that Xiomara Castro of the LIBRE party is in the lead at 29%, with Juan Orlando Hernández of the currently ruling Partido Nacional in second place at 27%-- a statistical dead heat, given the margin of error of +/-2%.

From May to the present in CID Gallup polling, Hernández has gained 9% in his support.

Where are those additional voters coming from?

Coverage of the poll in La Prensa provides information on all the major candidates, that we can use to show how CID Gallup polling looks over time (click for a larger image):

This suggests that the added voters for Juan Orlando Hernández could be members of the Partido Nacional who supported their party's candidate back in January, when he polled 23%, but fell away so that by May he polled only 18%, and now are back in the fold.

They could also include former supporters of Salvador Nasralla. The Anti-Corruption party candidate saw his support in the same series of CID Gallup polls rise from 18% to 21% from January to May, then fall to 11% in September.

It is also possible, as we have suggested previously, that something was odd about those May polling numbers from CID Gallup, which stand out when you look at all the polling over time (click for larger image; for clarity, does not include no reply/none of the above):

 

La Prensa repored that "Xiomara Castro is the public figure with the most favorable opinion among those measured in this poll". She has significant support from other parties, holding the loyalty of 93% of LIBRE voters while also drawing 15% of the Liberal Party vote, 3% of the Anti-Corruption party vote, and even 7% of the Partido Nacional voters.

The Partido Nacional and Partido Liberal, the two traditional dominant parties, face fractured party loyalty that most benefits LIBRE's candidate.

Only 71% of  Partido Nacional voters say they would vote for their party's candidate today. An astonishing 14% either decline to state their preference or are not in favor of any of the candidates running now. The remainder of the Partido Nacional members support Xiomara Castro (7%), Mauricio Villeda (4%), or Salvador Nasralla (4%).

Things are worse for the Liberal Party. Only 62% of its members would vote for Mauricio Villeda today. Hernández and Nasralla would receive 6% and 7% of the Liberal Party vote, and Xiomara Castro would get 15%. Another 11% of Liberal Party voters simply do not like their options, or are not prepared to express affiliation with any of the candidates.

The CID Gallup poll also assessed the candidate preference of voters who either have no party affiliation, or were affiliated with some other party.

Of these voters, 55% express no preference. Castro receives support from 20%; Hernández (10%), Nasralla (8%) and Villeda (5%) are far behind.

With the Partido Nacional base split, we still see the same race it has been all along: one new party (LIBRE) that has run in the lead throughout the campaign, and a close second (Partido Nacional).

So it is noteworthy that CID Gallup found that 33% of those polled expect Juan Orlando Hernández to be the next president, while Xiomara Castro is expected to be the next president by 28%. 

That political calculus may reflect another of the CID Gallup poll's findings: "reported doubts about the capacity of the Tribunal Supremo Electoral to organize and execute honest and transparent elections".

New July Polling in the Presidential Race

A friend dropped the 5th CESPAD survey of public opinion in Honduras in our in box, this one for July, 2013.  CESPAD is the Centro de Estudios para la Democracia, and came into existence in 2010.  Since then they've been performing polling on Honduran public sentiment.

In this case we're talking about a survey of 1,440 individuals over 18 years of age in a probabilistic, stratified, multi-stage sample between July 21 and July 31 of 2013.  They report margin of error of plus or minus 2.5%.

The survey focused on a number of topics.  This post will report on the sections about the November, 2013 elections; there will be more on other topics to come.

CESPAD found that these people plan to vote.

Overall, 80.3% of those surveyed said they intend to vote. Honduras typically has a voter turnout around 50-55%.

CESPAD asked respondents who planned to vote what party they would vote for in 2013.  Here's the results

     Libre           26.7%
     National      24.1%
     Liberal        16.6%
     PAC            10.2%
     Nobody       12.3%
     No Answer   8.6%


Every other party was less than one percent (Sorry Romeo!).

Over the last two years of polling, CESPAD found that the number of people who would vote for the National Party and Liberal Party has steadily declined. In the current election, the percentage who intend to vote for Libre and Partido Anti-Corrupción (PAC) take up the slack.

The popularity of each party's presidential candidate is similar to, but not the same as, the party popularity:

     Xiomara Castro (Libre)                     28.0%
     Juan Orlando Hernandez (National)   20.7%
     Mauricio Villeda (Liberal)                  13.7%
     Salvador Nasralla  (PAC)                  11.7%
     Undecided                                       17.8%
     Nobody                                             6.8%
     Romeo Vasquez (Alianza)                   0.7%
     Orles Anibal (Christian Democrat)       0.3%
     Andres Pavon (FAPER)                       0.2%
     Jorge Aguilar ( PINU)                         0.1%


Like other polling, CESPAD's numbers indicate that Hondurans could elect a president in November who receives far less than 50% of the vote. This could create serious complications for governing, depending on the composition of the Congress.

CESPAD notes that this is essentially a two-person race between Xiomara Castro and Juan Orlando Hernandez, both of whom have seen rising support over the last six months.  CESPAD concludes that the data suggest a reconfiguration of electoral politics is underway in Honduras, but the trends aren't yet definitive.

More interesting still is where each candidate's support comes from.

Slightly less than half of Liberal Party members surveyed said they would vote for the Party's candidate, Mauricio Villeda.  Xiomara Castro picks up support from 23.1% of them, and Undecided/Nobody a further 16.7%.  Nasralla and Hernandez pick up minor amounts of support here as well.

The National Party is a bit more cohesive, with 58.4% of National Party members saying they'd vote for Juan Orlando Hernandez, the party's candidate, and a further 20.8% Undecided or Nobody.  Villeda, Castro, and Nasralla pick up minor amounts of support among National Party members.

PAC is still more coherent than the National Party, with 81.9% of party members saying they will vote for their party's candidate, Salvador Nasralla, and a further 11% being either undecided or planning to vote for none of the above. Villeda, Hernandez, and Castro each pick up single digit support among PAC members.

Libre appears to be the most cohesive party, with 94% of its members going to vote for Xiomara Castro, the party candidate, and only 3.8% undecided. Villeda, Hernandez, and Vasquez each pick up support from less than one percent of Libre's members.

CESPAD concludes that a real effect of the 2009 coup has been to disrupt the two party system in Honduras.

Party fidelity appears to be the casualty, in line with party fidelity trends in other latin american countries. Only a third of respondents said they would never vote for a party they didn't belong to.  Over 50% said they might vote for the candidate of a party they didn't belong to, and nearly 20% said for sure they would be doing so this time.

The better educated the voter, the more likely they intend to vote for Castro or Nasralla.  The traditional parties do best with those with little or no education.

The take-away from this poll, as in others, is that the real race is between Libre's Xiomara Castro and Juan Orlando Hernandez of the National Party.  Villeda does not seem to be a viable candidate, and he loses a nearly a quarter of his party to Xiomara Castro.  Party loyalty suffered in the National Party as well, and Hernandez has less than 60% of his party behind him.  In order to win the presidential election, he will need stronger support from Nationalists.

Nasralla is running well with a consistent 11-15% of the electorate supporting him-- not enough to be elected, but enough to suggest his platform resonates.

These numbers bear no resemblance to those reported by Paradigma for July. Both polls show the candidates in the same order. The differences in absolute numbers may lie in how questions were asked, and the sampling strategy of each polling group.

Paradigma now reports the results of its August survey.  It shows Libre, the National Party, and the Liberal party numbers up, with Nasralla and none of the above falling:

     None of the Above  27.0%
     Xiomara Castro       22.9%
     J Orlando Hernandez 19.9%
     Salvador Nasralla    10.3%
     Mauricio Villeda       9.4%

Variations of 2-3% from the July poll results are within the margin of error of the poll, so none of these changes are significant.

Neither polling company has been through an election cycle in Honduras yet, so we don't know how they'll fare against actual election results.

All the polls, though, are telling the same story: a fractured electorate, a surging new party (Libre), and a sinking old one (Liberal).

And They're Off: Honduran Presidential Campaign Begins

San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa are festooned with vast quantities of political campaign signs this morning as Monday marked the official start of the campaign to elect a new president, congress, and 298 municipal governments.  These signs encode the party they represent through the use of colors:  red and black for Libre, yellow and red for the Democratic Unification Party, blue for the National Party, red and white for the Liberal Party, and so on.

In the most recent poll by Paradigma, Xiomara Castro maintains her lead (although almost half the electorate expressed no support for any of the declared candidates):

Xiomara Castro                19.8%
Juan Hernandez               16.7%
Mauricio Villeda                 7.0%
Salvador Nasralla               6.2%
Andres Pavon                     0.6%
Romeo Vasquez                  0.4%
Jorge Aguilar                      0.2%
Orle Solis                           0.2%
Not reporting/Not Stated    17.5%
None of the Above             31.4%

The poll,  of 2,429 individuals in 16 departments in Honduras between July 16 and July 30, has a margin of error of 2%.  Some Honduran press sources inflated Hernandez' numbers in publishing the results, rounding him up to 17% (or more).

While candidates have, so far, said little of substance, here's a list of eight presidential candidates and the positions they've adopted:

1. Juan Orlando Hernandez - National Party.  Political pundits, who uniformly dismiss the new political parties, consider him the candidate to beat.  Hernandez championed the new military police, and has indicated that we should expect more militarization of the police should he win office.  He's been an advocate of privatization of government resources and income streams during his term as head of Congress.

2. Mauricio Villeda - Liberal Party.  After nearly half of the Liberal party left to form Libre, that left a power vacuum which was filled by the extremely conservative wing of the party, typified by the leader of the coup-installed de facto government, Roberto Micheletti, and Mauricio Villeda. Villeda has come out against corruption, and for more extradition of Hondurans involved in international organized crime.  He's against gay marriage in Honduras.  Villeda promised change in 15 years, well beyond his term limit.  Most of Villeda's attention has been on disparaging Libre and Xiomara Castro.  Villeda, third in the polls, unlike Hernandez and Castro has not seen his popularity increase in the last six months.

3. Salvador Nasralla - Anti-Corruption Party.  He's told the business community in Honduras that he believes in free enterprise, but also in them paying their taxes.  Nasralla, on being asked to sign an agreement to abide by the results of the election implied he would call the electorate to insurrection should there be indications of widespread fraud.  Nasralla has intimated that election credentials were being traded and sold, causing the legal representative of PAPH (another new party, started by former Armed Forces commander Romeo Vasquez Velasquez) to demand he prove his accusations.  Nasralla has advocated for the military to return to their barracks and to cease any policing role.

4. Xiomara Castro - Partido de Libertad y Refundación. (LIBRE),  Castro would continue with the assistance programs to poor families begun under the Lobo Sosa administration.  But instead of continuing with the neo-liberal economic policies that have been dismantling the Honduran economy and leading to greater inequality and poverty, she proposes economic policies that would dismantle the monopolies created in the last 20 years and provide equal access to capital, both from private banks, and from the government.  In addition she's open to and welcomes foreign investment and technology transfer, as long as it respects Honduran sovereignty and laws.  She would re-implement the technology bonds meant to allow campesinos to modernize their farming techniques, originally introduced under José Manuel Zelaya.  Most of all, she emphasizes that this is not a campaign about leftists and rightists:

"Those that supported the coup d'etat, the constitutional crisis, the destruction of the rule of law, the destruction of democracy accusing us of being communists and radical leftists are the only ones interested in ideologically polarizing this campaign.....We of Libre, represent exactly the opposite."

This is a swipe at Hernandez, Vasquez, and Villeda, all of whom have been accusing her of being a radical leftist who is going to bring communism into Honduras.  Castro advocated that the military be returned to their barracks and cease their policing duties.

5. Romeo Vasquez Velasquez - Honduran Patriotic Alliance (PAPH) - Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, retired head of the armed forces of Honduras and a leader of the 2009 coup, is running with a promise to provide security and halt illegal activity. He says he's running to prevent chaos and bloodshed in the country.  Vasquez was mocked during the signing of an accord to protect human rights with catcalls of "murderer" by members of two other new parties, FAPER and Libre, which caused him to claim they disrespected him and to ask what happened to human rights for those who aren't leftist.

6. Andres Pavon - Frente Amplio Político Electoral en Resistencia (FAPER) and the Unificación Democratica Party (UD).  Pavon told the Cortés Chamber of Commerce that he is for jobs, security, and dialogue.  Pavon is vocally in favor of gay marriage.  He proposed small hydroelectric dams to improve electricity generation without the population displacement and investment needed for larger projects.  He is a proponent of biodiesel to decrease Honduran imports of petroleum.  Pavon agrees with the current Plan de la Nacion (a 20 year set of goals created under the current government) but proposes they need to be updated with participatory socialism (or what got Zelaya overthrown).

7. Orle Solis - Christian Democrats. Solis has promised to modernize the government and especially to bring government aid to modernizing agricultural production.  She also promised to reduce migration to the cities

8. Jorge Aguilar - Partido de Innovación y Unidad Social Demócrata (PINU).  Aguilar promised to reduce the government deficit from 13% to 3% in 2014 by making government more efficient and modern.  He proposes that there's more government income to be had simply from improving collections of taxes (something the current government has not been able to do, leaving an estimated 40% in the hands of businesses).  Aguilar also emphasized security.

There you have it. Eight candidates, nine parties, four of them new, with the lead close between the traditional party in power and the most populist of the new parties. Under Honduran law, the top vote recipient becomes the president: no run off needed, no minimum level of popular support.

The next three months should be interesting...

More Presidential Polling: Bad News for Main Parties

The Honduran newspaper La Prensa commissioned a poll from CID/Gallup, their second of the voters of Honduras.  The previous poll was in January 2013 and we discussed it here.

The results of the latest poll are not good for the two traditional parties. 

In the Presidential election,  Xiomara Castro (Libre)  leads with 28%, Salvador Nasralla (Anti-Corruption) is second with 21%, Juan O. Hernandez (National)  is at 18%, and Mauricio Villeda (Liberal) had 14%.  No response/Decline to State was 19%.  This shows a net loss of support for Hernandez  (5%) and Villeda (2%) since the previous poll in January.  Poor Romeo Vasquez Velasquez again polled at less than 1%.

The poll, conducted between May 1 and May 8 of 1200 voters in 16 departments, has a margin of error of 5 percent.

Those are the raw numbers, but there's more here than that.

The article contains a chart showing party preference of the Honduran electorate from 2006 to the present.  It shows steady erosion of support for the National Party since Porfirio Lobo Sosa took office, from 38% to 32% of the electorate.  It shows fairly steady erosion of support for the Liberal Party as well, from a high of 43% in 2006, to 24% today (there's an error in the chart accompanying the article; the text makes it clear that in this survey the Liberal party has 24% support). 

La Prensa makes much of the fact that 24% is an increase over the previous result for the Liberal party, but the change is within the margin of error of the poll, so there's no trend evident here.  Likewise, La Prensa makes much of a small decline in support for Libre, from 21% to 18% over the last period, but again, this is within the margin of error, and not interpretable as a trend.  The Anti-Corruption Party also shows a 2% decline in support since the January survey, again within the margin of error.

So, if the traditionally dominant parties are losing support, where are those voters turning?

CID/Gallup split out the support for presidential candidates by party membership.  Xiomara Castro had high support among her own party respondents (87%) but also was supported by 25% of the Liberal Party members in the survey.  Salvador Nasralla draws support from his small party (87%), but also significant support from both National (20%) and Liberal party (13%) members.  Mauricio Villeda has support from 42% of Liberals, but lacks significant support in any other party.  Likewise, Juan O. Hernandez has support from 48% of National Party members, but lacks significant support among other party's members.

The majority of independents, those not part of any of the above parties, were not supporting any candidate (43%), though Nasralla picked up significant support among independents (27%) as did Castro, to a lesser extent (17%).

The big story here, though, is again the No Response, Decline to State faction.  25% of Liberals expressed no preference for a candidate.  Likewise, 17% of National Party members had no preference.  Even 4% of the members of the newly formed Anti-Corruption party reported no preference, when the only reason for the existence of the paper is the presidential run of Salvador Nasralla.

So will this influence the actual outcome of the presidential election? That is harder to predict. CID/Gallup is reported in La Prensa as saying that the two newly formed, and now leading parties, Libre and the Anti-Corruption Party

do not have the number of supporters that the National and Liberal Parties have, and that makes us ask if in the end, can these new organizations implement a get-out-the-vote plan the way the traditional parties do?

It takes money, organization, and logistics to carry out a get-out-the-vote plan, so this is a legitimate question.

We actually have no indication how any of these parties will perform in this election.  So far the two traditional parties have been trying to quiet infighting among factions. Villeda has complained about being poor, which might have an effect on the get out the vote efforts of the Liberal Party.

And then there's the 20% of the electorate that is just not interested in any of the candidates. This should be a very unusual election, well worth watching closely.

Where have all the voters gone?

Voters in Honduras are increasingly dissatisfied with the choices the political parties have given them for Presidential candidates.

That's the real conclusion of a new poll taken by Encuestadora Paradigma.  The poll, involving 2,292 interviews of voting age individuals in 16 departments in Honduras, carried out between the 14th and 23rd of April, has a 2.2% margin or error at the 95% confidence interval.

The poll, the third this year from Encuestadora Paradigma, asked "if the election of 2013 were today, who would you vote for among the candidates listed, for president?"

Here's the results:

Xiomara Castro                  19.7%
Juan O. Hernandez           13.3%
Mauricio Villeda                10.2%
Salvador Nasralla               9.9%
Not Stated/No Response   20.1%
None of the Above            26.4%

Support for everyone else, including Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, together accounted for a grand total of 0.4%. 

Assuming the sample is actually representative, this would tend to indicate Xiomara Castro, of the Libre party, is really leading all her competitors for president, since the difference between her and the next polled candidate is substantially more than the margin of error.

Other leading candidates aren't buying it.

Mauricio Villeda, candidate for the Liberal party, says his own internal polls, conducted by Borge & Asociados, show him in the lead over everyone else running.

Juan Orlando Hernandez of the National party says pretty much the same thing.

Ecuestadora Paradigma offers data from consecutive months of polling for February, March, and April of this year.

The trends in their results are interesting.  All of the candidates, with the exception of Nasralla, have lost popularity over this period. 

Hernandez has lost 4.7 points, falling from 18.6% in February to 13.3% in April, Castro has lost 5.3 points, going from 25% in February to 19.7% in April.  Villeda lost 2.7% going from 12.9% in February to 10.2% in April. Nasralla has gained 0.2% over the same interval, which is well within the range to simply be statistical noise.

So where have the voters gone?

The number of None of the Above, and No Response/Decline to State have increased in each monthly poll.  The percentage of people choosing No Response/Decline to State increased by 7.2%, while the percentage of people selecting None of the Above grew 7.8%. That means that 15% of the electorate decided to abandon their support for a defined candidate over the course of three months.

Encuestadora Paradigma gives the political party membership for respondents. These numbers should make Juan O. Hernandez and Mauricio Villeda afraid. Their constituencies, the Liberal and National party members, made up slightly more than 45% of the respondents, yet combined, only 23.5% of the respondents say they will vote for these candidates. Where are the other 21.5% of members of these traditional leading parties?

One answer: to the new alternative parties that formed in the wake of the 2009 coup.

Xiomara Castro's popularity extends beyond the 13% of the sample composed of Libre party members, as does Nasralla's popularity, which is clearly broader than the 3.2% of respondents who say they belong to his party. 

But the change in the political landscape may be more than this.  More than a third of voters polled by Encuestadora Paradigma, 38.2%, reported not belonging to any political party. 

The take away: Xiomara Castro is undisputably the front runner in this poll, as she has been in all three of Encuestadora Paradigma's polls.

So far, only two candidates are showing a broader appeal beyond their own party, both in newly formed parties. Castro and Nasralla have shown an ability to appeal to voters beyond their party.

Meanwhile the candidates of the traditional two leading parties, Hernandez and Villeda, are not managing to capture the support of all of their party members, let alone enough voters from outside to indicate one would win if the election were held today. 

Getting the support of the large block of independent voters, and getting them to vote, will be the challenge for whichever candidate wants to win the election in November. There is a long time between now and then-- but this is not how Honduran presidential politics used to work.

Honduran Poll: None Of The Above Winning

Le Vote, a private market research firm has the results of an opinion poll they did on the presidential candidates for November's presidential election.  Here's what they report:

Xiomara Castro                  30%
Salvador Nasralla               28%
Juan O. Hernandez             26%
Mauricio Villeda                  16%

Le Vote says nothing about the size of the sample, the uncertainty, or the method used for obtaining the result. 
But there's an even larger problem with these numbers.  There are no undecideds or "decline to state". Reporting suggests that is significant.

According to El Heraldo, Le Vote said that 15% of the respondents didn't know or declined to state a preference, while 22.33% said "none of the above".  Further, El Heraldo reports that the real percentages reported by Le Vote differ from what's reported on Le Vote's own website, where apparently the results are rounded to the nearest integer. 

Le Vote is giving us a lesson in how to screw up reporting polling data.

Correcting using using El Heraldo's non-rounded percentages of those polled, totaling 66.77%, would look like this, organized by popularity:

None of the Above       22.3300 %
Xiomara Castro            19.8975 %
Salvador Nasralla         18.4686 %
Juan O. Hernandez       17.4003 %
Undecided/Not Stating  15.0000 %
Mauricio Villeda            11.0103 %

So, None of the Above would win if the election were held today, and by any normal polling margin of error, we cannot discriminate the placement of the next several candidates (Xiomara Castro, Salvador Nasralla, or Juan O. Hernandez). 

Undecided leads Villeda, the Liberal Party candidate, by a significant amount.  Villeda continues to show that the Liberals are definitely at the rear of the field for major political parties, but even he is leading over Romeo Vasquez Velasquez who failed to register in the poll.

Not even a majority of post coup Liberal Party supports their candidate according to Le Vote, which says Villeda has only has 39% support among Liberals.  Libre party candidate Xiomara Castro has 11% of the Liberal Party member's vote in the same poll.
This pattern is also true in the National Party, where less than a majority of those members surveyed supported Juan Orlando Hernandez, their own party's candidate for president, with 44% of the National Party members saying they support him. 

These weak levels of support for the two traditional party candidates contrast with 98% of Libre supporting its candidate, Xiomara Castro.

But the political parties are not of equal size.  The National Party forms about 32% of the electorate, according to Le Vote, while the post coup Liberal Party is less than half that size, at 15%.

Libre is slightly smaller, at 14%, while the Anti-Corruption Party of Salvador Nasralla is a tiny 6%. 

Le Vote reports that 31% of the electorate is not registered with any party.  The results reported by Le Vote show that Xiomara Castro and Salvador Nasralla are doing well among those independent voters, while Juan O. Hernandez is not.

The high "none of the above" value in the poll, though, indicates most Hondurans dissatisfaction with all of the candidates. The question is, will those citizens vote-- and if so, for whom?

The Liberal Party at 122

The Liberal party in Honduras just celebrated its 122 birthday, amid widely divergent views about the status of the party.

Founded February 5, 1891, the Liberal party grew from the Liberal league which had been formed in 1884.  Liberalism, based on ideas ideas espoused by Morazan, is described as a center-right political philosophy. 

The Honduran Liberal party is one of two founded in Central America that has persevered to the present, the other being the Colombian Liberal party.  The Honduran Liberal party itself is part of Liberal International, a federation of Liberal parties throughout the world, which promotes:

liberalism, individual freedom, human rights, the rule of law, tolerance, equality of opportunity, social justice, free trade and a market economy.

Since that definition starts with "liberalism" it is somewhat recursive, so lets unpack what liberalism is.  According to the 1947 liberal manifesto, liberalism believes

that liberty and individual responsibility are the foundations of civilized society; that the state is only the instrument of the citizens it serves; that any action of the state must respect the principles of democratic accountability; that constitutional liberty is based upon the principles of separation of powers; that justice requires that in all criminal prosecution the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, and to a fair verdict free from any political influence; that state control of the economy and private monopolies both threaten political liberty; that rights and duties go together, and that every citizen has a moral responsibility to others in society; and that a peaceful world can only be built upon respect for these principles and upon cooperation among democratic societies. We reaffirm that these principles are valid throughout the world.

The Liberal Party of Honduras seems to have lost its web presence, which used to be at www.partidoliberaldehonduras.hn, which now redirects to the Facebook page of Esteban Handal, a failed Liberal Party candidate in the primary elections for President this year.

A historic rift formed between the Catholic church and the Liberal party during the nineteenth century. During the rule of Francisco Morazan over the United States of Central America in the 1830s  Morazan, who advocated the true separation of church and state, made the state government stop enforcing the tithing of the population for the benefit of the church.

In recent times, Liberal parties have tended to split up fractioning into more social democrat factions, and more conservative ones.  Until the coup of 2009 the Honduran Liberal party had avoided this split, but as a result of the coup, about 55 percent of the Liberal party left to form Libre, the new political party headed by Manuel Zelaya Rosales.  That rift has left a small social democrat faction within the remainder of the Honduran Liberal party, along with a strong right wing faction, responsible for the coup, which controls it.

Liberal party members assert the party has come together since the exodus of 2009 and will win the 2013 elections. Analysts disagree. 

Yani Rosenthal, himself a presidential candidate in the party primary this year, told a reporter for Proceso Digital that he didn't see the party as factionalized, but that it must unify now that the primary elections are over around its presidential candidate, Mauricio Villeda, who represents the far right in the party.  Rosenthal said:

Everything will depend on the capacity of the leaders of the party to unify the distinct factions which participated in the internal [elections].  If the leaders are capable of uniting it, the party can be first and win the next general election.

So far, though, the party has not rallied in support of Villeda, who of course was intimately involved in the de facto regime installed in the coup of 2009.

Edmundo Orellana, who belongs with some of the remaining few social democrats inside the Liberal party, doesn't see the party leadership consolidating authority; just the opposite:

There is no acceptance of the leadership of the Central Party Executive because there has been an exodus of Liberals to the Libre party and those that are still within the Liberal party feel marginalized in the organization....There is a distancing between the Liberal party organization and the candidate of the party.

Julio Navarro, a political analyst and Liberal party member sees no way the party can win in the 2013 elections.  For Navarro, there's a crisis of credibility in the party itself.  He further indicated:

The party leadership that arose out of the primary elections has not been seen; the presidential candidate does not appear interested in uniting the factions which participated in the primary election.

Navarro suggested that

to win, they have to regain credibility and confess, because those who ran the party made a mistake in June 2009.  They need to say a "mea culpa" for liberalism and blame the errors on whose who led at that time; they must recover the ability to organize and construct messages that convince the electorate to accept their political proposal.

But Navarro doesn't hold out much hope of this happening.  He noted that their party presidential candidate, Mauricio Villeda has the same problem that Elvin Santos had in the last election, held while the de facto regime controlled the country:

They believe because they are the most conservative that is sufficient to win elections.  Villeda assumes that because he is the most conservative candidate, against the menace of Juan Orlando Hernandez and Libre, that he'll be elected....this belief that he'll be elected could lead him to defeat.

The first political poll of the year showed that the Liberal party candidate would come in fourth if the election were held now, behind Xiomara Castro of Libre, Juan Orlando Hernandez of the National party, and Salvador Nasralla of the Anti Corruption party. 

That tends to support Orellana and Navarro's analyses. 

Proceso Digital assures us that most experts agree that the Liberal Party would come in third, though they fail to cite any specific experts.

The Liberal party remains stuck in the factionalism that resulted in the coup of 2009 where the ultra conservative faction of the Liberal party took out their party's more centrist president. 

Mauricio Villeda has not made any overtures to other existing factions within the Liberal party to try and unify it post primary elections.  Instead he's left it up to the factions to come bargain with him for a power-sharing role in the party, as Yani Rosenthal did.

The faction controlling the Liberal party thinks they will win simply because they are running the most conservative candidate from a major political party. Meanwhile, the Honduran people seems to have moved on.

How many more years of continuity will this long-established party have, if it cannot accept the evidence of lost elections and lost support?

The 2013 Presidential Race Begins......

The first poll of Honduran Citizens about the Presidential candidates is in, and it contains a surprise:  Xiomara Castro, the LIBRE Party candidate and wife of former President Manuel Zelaya Rosales is leading among all the presidential candidates.

The poll, conducted by CID-Gallup between January 14 and January 18, 2013 with 1256 likely voters surveyed, indicated that Xiomara Castro was in a statistical tie with Juan Orlando Hernandez, the National Party candidate and current head of Congress, 25% to 23%.

The poll indicates that if the election were held today, Xiomara would beat the other main alternative candidate, Salvador Nasralla of the Anti Corruption Party, by 6%.

In some ways the most interesting thing in the poll: Xiomara out-polled the Liberal Party candidate, Mauricio Villeda (who played a role in the sham "negotiations" by Roberto Micheletti after the 2009 coup) by 9%.

What this suggests: supporters of the more progressive end of the Liberal party may well have shifted to LIBRE, and this leaves the remaining part of the Liberal Party seriously weakened.

But the National Party is likely not overjoyed either. They probably not be in the position they hoped to be after settling their primary so expeditiously-- by not counting all the votes-- and supressing any internal contention after the primary ended-- by firing Supreme Court justices who might otherwise have admitted a request for a formal count of the actual votes.

There is obviously a long way to go before the election campaign in September, and the election itself in November. But unless someone finds something really funny in the sampling for this poll, it is clear that one legacy of the 2009 coup is a serious shakeup in electoral politics in Honduras.

Honduran Congress Moving to Dissmiss Supreme Court Justices

Rumors are flying tonight in Honduras. 

El Heraldo reports that the military have been called in by president of Congress Juan Orlando Hernandez to guard Congress in an extraordinary session this evening while it debates a report from the commission appointed yesterday to make recommendations about the Supreme Court in Honduras. 

El Heraldo reports that the commission recommended removing 4 to 7 of the justices.

Marvin Ponce, vice president of Congress, told the press that the removal of justices is the starting point of the discussion this evening. 

The decision to proceed, according to Ponce, comes from an imminent political crisis resulting from the primary elections carried out a month ago, combined with the Sala Constitucional's declaration that the Police Purification Law is unconstitutional.

Ponce's understanding is that "there is conflict at the highest levels...I understand that the vacant justice positions will be divided between Yani [Rosenthal] and the National Party.  In play is the subject of the recent elections, powerful groups that want to move pieces to stop the process." 

Ponce went on to tell El Heraldo that to not dismiss the justices would be to imperil the candidacy of Juan Orlando Hernandez, the head of Congress.

But wait a minute. Ponce has spread wild rumors before that had no basis in reality, so we need to take his information with a grain of salt.

First, Congress does not actually possess the power to remove a justice of the Supreme Court, who can only be removed for legal cause. 

Mauricio Villeda, newly elected presidential candidate of the Liberal Party, agrees that Congress hasn't got a legal leg to stand on. 

Roy Utrecho, of the Public Prosecutor's office, says what Congress is trying to do is an act of treason. 
Finally, Yani Rosenthal denies any involvement.

Ramon Custodio, commissioner of Human Rights in Honduras, commented that

The abuses that they are committing in the name of the people of Honduras from the National Congress are a terrible example for Rule of Law where you have an independence of the powers and things are worked out within the framework of institutionality.

Wenceslao Lara, Congressman for the Department of Cortes said:

We are the most corrupt [country] in Central America right now and one of the most corrupt in Latin America.  They're the incompetent ones, they're the ones doing harm; they're putting us in a situation that the people of Honduras don't want......

I call on the President of the Republic to reflect, and on Congress to stop this diabolical attempt that they are making against Honduras.  They are the ones who are incapable of governing the country at this time.

As of midnight in Tegucigalpa Congress was still in session.

Registration of Slates of Candidates

On Wednesday, all factions in all the political parties in Honduras had to register their slate of candidates for national, departmental, and local office.  In all, some 21 movements within the political parties registered slates of candidates. 

There were a few surprises.

LIBRE, the political party formed earlier this year from groups within the resistance, consists of five groups:
28th of June Movement (headed by Carlos Zelaya)
the Popular Revolutionary Force (headed by Juan Barahona)
the Progressive Resistance Movement (headed by Rasel Tomé)
the People Organized in Resistance (headed by Mauricio Ramos)
the 5th of July Movement (headed by Nelson Avila)

LIBRE had wanted to declare Xiomara Castro de Zelaya as their consensus candidate, but Honduran law requires there to be a primary election to select candidates for every level of office within each political party.  So all five groups listed Xiomara Castro de Zelaya as their presidential candidate, and a retired police commissioner, Maria Luisa Borjas, as candidate for Mayor of Tegucigalpa. 

The Liberal Party this year consists of 3 movements:  Yanismo (candidate:  Yani Rosenthal), the United Liberal Front (Esteban Handel) and the Liberal Villedista Movement (Mauricio Villeda, memorable for his role as a Micheletti representative in failed negotiations for a solution after the coup of 2009).

The Nationalist Party this year fragmented into 8 movements:  the Blue Heart Movement (candidate:  Eva Fernandez), Saving Honduras (Ricardo Alvarez, current Mayor of Tegucigalpa),  For a New Honduras (Loreley Fernandez), the Authentic Nationalist Movement (Fernando Anduray), the United Blue Movement (Juan Orlando Hernandez, head of Congress), the Movement for my Country (Miguel Pastor),  The Democratic Reserve Movement (Jose Osorto), and the Barnica Action Movement (Víctor Hugo Barnica).  Only three of these (Alvarez, Hernandez, and Pastor) are considered to have a chance at the nomination.

In addition, there is the Anticorruption Party (candidate:  Salvador Nasralla) and the Patriotic Alliance of Honduras (Romeo Vásquez Vélasquez).

The Frente Amplio Politico Electoral en Resistencia (FAPER) has two movements:  Solidarity, Organization and Struggle (Andres Pavon, of the human rights organization CODEH),  and the Movimiento Amplio Reformista (Guadalupe Coello).

The Christian Democrat Party has a single movement, the Christian Democrats in Action Movement (still selecting a candidate).

There were no reports of slates of candidates for the UD Party.  Previous reports indicated that the UD party was considering an alliance with LIBRE, or perhaps FAPER. Also no report of any slate for the PINU party.

In all, more than 53,000 people will be proposed for political office across all the parties in Honduras.  All of these individuals will compete in the primary election, to be held on November 18, 2012. Because of the addition of new parties and movements within them, the level of participation is higher than in previous elections.

And that creates a problem. 

To support all the parties and movements, the Honduran Supreme Electoral Tribunal needs 40,000 rooms spread across the country to host the election, and they are short some 18,337 rooms.  Furthermore, some of the locations already contracted don't have sufficient rooms for all the parties.

The parties have until August 6 to continue to submit changes to their lists of candidates, and the Election Tribunal will rule on accepting both the movements and their candidates by August 26, 2012.