With a little over two-thirds of the ballots in the Honduras election tallied, the lead has changed hands. The former vice-president, Salvador Nasralla, has a small but potentially significant lead over his rival, the conservative former mayor of Tegucigalpa, Nasry Asfura. Yet Asfura's National Party continues to brief journalists that they have the numbers for an eventual win.
The race remains on a knife-edge.
In Washington, President Donald Trump has staked his hopes on nothing less than an outright Asfura victory and has tried to directly influence the race in support of his favored candidate.
Whether it has been intimating that funds could be withheld from the impoverished Central American nation or making unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud, many in Honduras see the US president's fingerprints all over this election.
To Honduran political analyst, Josué Murillo, it smacks of the kind of treatment Honduras expected from Washington during the Cold War.
Irrespective of whether the National Party go on to victory, one of their key figures is already celebrating. On Monday, ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández walked out of jail in Virginia a free man having served just one year of a 45-year sentence for drug-smuggling and weapons charges.
His release came after Trump urged Honduran voters to cast their ballots for Asfura. Hernández was unexpectedly pardoned by Trump, despite having been found guilty last year by a court in New York of running a drug conspiracy which had brought more than 400 tonnes of cocaine into the United States.
Journalists in Honduras who have covered the rise and fall of Hernández – from the moment he rose to national prominence following a coup in 2009 to his extradition – struggle to recognize that description of a roundly detested former president.
Now, the pivotal question arises: will Hernández attempt to return to Honduras? His wife, Ana García Carías, acknowledges that this decision rests on the security guarantees provided by the authorities.
As the votes continue to be counted, all eyes remain on whether Trump will gain a new ally just as he frees an old one.
