MEXICO CITY — They were twin election surprises.

About 36 hours before presidential polls opened in Honduras, President Donald Trump warned that if his preferred candidate didn’t win, the United States would “not be throwing good money after bad” to the country.

In the same online post on Friday, Trump announced he would pardon a notorious former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted last year of working with cartels to flood the United States with cocaine. Hernández hails from the same political party as Trump’s favored candidate.

On Monday morning, Hondurans awoke to the news that Trump appears to have made an impact.

His preferred candidate, a right-wing former mayor, Nasry Asfura, 67, was in a virtual tie with Salvador Nasralla, 72, a sportscaster from an

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