Opposition to an attack on Venezuela is stronger in the US than in Latin America. And the latest from Honduras’ disputed presidential election.
US-VENEZUELA
Trump’s Venezuela campaign faces homefront opposition
For a president who ran on an “America First” platform, Donald Trump’s military campaign in Venezuela poses a strange paradox, as it is a lot less popular among US citizens than it is in Latin America.
According to a recent YouGov poll, only 17% of US adult citizens support using military force to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, while 45% oppose the idea and 38% remain unsure.
The picture is much different south of the Río Grande, where US military intervention is backed by 53%, with 35% against it and 12% undecided, according to the latest Atlas Intel survey. In countries like Colombia and Chile, which have seen the effects of mass-scale Venezuelan migration up close, support for US-backed regime change rises above 80% and 70%, respectively.
The data might surprise those looking at the continent through the lens of Cold War narratives, who recall US going against Latin America’s popular will on a number of occasions, from the ousting of Guatemala’s Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 to that of Nicaragua’s Sandinistas in the 1980s. But much has changed on the continent since then.
Up north, revelations about the covert operations to oust democratic governments have been repudiated by US progressives, who were appalled by stories of torture, kidnapping and abuse — and saw them as an international embarrassment for the nation. Conservative voters have also grown skeptical of US foreign intervention, amid the mounting costs and death toll of American soldiers.
Further south, the fear of US-backed right-wing dictatorships has lost some weight, and it is left-wing authoritarians that are taking the most heat in Latin America. This was evidenced by the left’s poor showing in Honduras and Bolivia, two of Maduro’s closest allies, who could not even muster one-third of the vote in their re-election bids this year.
Still, this does not mean that Trump has free rein in the region, as the presidents of its largest countries, Brazil’s Lula and Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum, have repeatedly opposed foreign military intervention to oust Maduro.
👉 Why it matters. Trump’s deployment of military assets in the Caribbean is now the largest the region has seen in decades, and the US leader signalled further escalation this week, promising ground bombings after a failed round of negotiations. But while regional actors will try to sway Trump one way or the other, the domestic front could be the deciding factor in the president’s upcoming steps.
So far, US support for Trump’s strikes against Caribbean boats stands at roughly 50%. But the attacks against alleged drug smugglers are being closely scrutinized by human rights activists and lawyers, who denounce extrajudicial killings and lack of due process.
This week, lawmakers upped the pressure on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for a strike that might have violated international maritime law, killing shipwrecked survivors from one of the alleged drug boats.
The US press has also focused on lies and exaggerations about Venezuela’s role in drug trafficking. The regime is undoubtedly involved in cocaine smuggling to some degree, but not with the deadlier fentanyl, which generally reaches the US through Mexico and uses precursors made in China.
Even if few in the US have any sympathy for Maduro, false claims to justify war bring back memories of the failed Iraq invasion, carried out under false pretenses by the George W. Bush administration — with massive costs at home and abroad.
Finally, there’s the Latino vote, which has historically leaned Democrat but swung towards Trump in 2024. Republicans’ aggressive anti-immigration campaign has already lost them some ground among Latinos this year, but their attacks on Maduro are generally favored among that demographic.
While many Latino voters would hail a seamless regime change in Venezuela, the risk of entering into a costly, protracted conflict could cause a larger backlash among the general public.
HONDURAS
Lead changes in Honduras spark renewed fraud allegations
After two lead changes and five days of painstakingly slow vote counting, the conservative Nasry “Tito” Asfura is once again leading the presidential election in Honduras, but his Liberal Party rival Salvador Nasralla suggests it’s all thanks to fraud.
As the chart below shows, Nasralla passed Asfura in the vote count on December 3, after two days of slowly playing catch-up. But Asfura regained the lead on December 4, thanks to ballots from rural areas that tend to favor conservatives but are usually uploaded later. He currently holds 40.2% of the vote, against Nasralla’s 39.5%.
The turnaround ignited suspicions in a country where fraud claims (though never fully proven) have dominated discussions for more than a decade. In 2017, Nasralla ended up leading nationwide protest rallies after a similar late loss versus right-winger Juan Orlando Hernández — a controversial figure in his own right due a drug trafficking case for which US President Donald Trump pardoned him last week.
“Early this morning, while people are still asleep, as they always do, the National Party entered results from the Olancho, Lempira and Francisco Morazán departments which do not correspond to reality, and which were inflated like the attachment below shows,” Nasralla denounced.
His rivals at the National Party countered that the example Nasralla was showing, as well as any other discrepant spreadsheets, are not uploaded to the “quick count” system and will ultimately be settled in the slower final count.
Interestingly, betting markets continued to favor Asfura, even when Nasralla briefly took the lead, suggesting that smart money had factored undercounted rural voting centers in their calculations — or that they had some inside knowledge about future manipulation. Odds currently favor Asfura being declared the winner by 93% to 7%, as Nasralla still has some hope from foreign voting centers, the Cortés department, and the final vote recount.
👉 Why it matters. Even if there is no proven fraud, any election where large swathes of the population doubt the legitimacy of the results should be a major source of concern. In recent years, Brazil, Bolivia, the US and other countries have shown how this can easily lead to violence, and Honduras will remain on high alert for weeks to come.
The upcoming reports from election observers will be worth following, although even those can be fallible. Back in 2019, the Organization of American States (OAS) called foul play in Bolivia’s election, and the country’s right-wing elites joined forces with the Army to oust incumbent Evo Morales, who was running for a third re-election. A year later, the OAS admitted that no fraud could be proven.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Which of these former Latin American losing presidential candidates did NOT claim fraud after losing a presidential election?
- Colombia’s Gustavo Rojas Pinilla in 1970
- Peru’s Mario Vargas Llosa in 1990
- Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2006
- Venezuela’s Henrique Capriles in 2013
QUICK CATCH-UP
🚨 Violence in Peru is now spilling over into national politics, as presidential pre-candidate Rafael Belaúnde survived a shooting in Lima. The grandson of former President Fernando Belaúnde shot back at his assailants but was not struck by any bullets. In a separate case, unknown hitmen killed a congressional candidate in the coastal city of Piura, prompting calls for revamped security among political figures, including interim President José Jerí.
🗳️ Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council (CPT) said it will set a new electoral calendar for 2026, after a gang takeover of its territory made voting impossible this year. The CPT was expected to step down next February, handing power over to an elected government for the first time since 2016. “We must finally offer the Haitian people the opportunity to freely and responsibly choose those who will lead them,” said council president Laurent Saint-Cyr.
📝 Despite a comprehensive defeat in his four-question plebiscite last month, President Daniel Noboa said he will continue to push for constitutional reforms in Ecuador, even if they come through partial amendments. Noboa said he will “keep fighting” for his plans in Congress, where his National Democratic Action (ADN) party has forged a working majority thanks to deals with smaller parties.
🖐️ In Costa Rica, right-wing President Rodrigo Chaves will face a key vote on December 18, as Congress will decide whether to remove the leader’s immunity. Losing that legal protection would open him to investigations on electoral law violations ahead of next year’s vote, where he will not be able to run but is seeking to elect a protégé.