A businessman who has US President Donald Trump's backing for the presidency of Honduras was locked in a "technical tie" with a rightwing TV host after a preliminary vote count, the Central American country's electoral body said Monday.

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

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

Days before the vote, former Tegucigalpa mayor Asfura won the backing of Trump -- as the US president sought to put his finger on th

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