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The Economist December 9th 2017 The Americas 37
Honduras’s election (2) nicipalities because they are small, and mightbe a reason whyelectronicallytrans-
Reasons to tend to be mainly urban ormainly rural. mitted votes would favour Mr Nasralla.
Butthe difference would have to be huge to
Even controlling for that, the vote count
disbelieve shifted systematically from Mr Nasralla to explain the shift in the later count to Mr
Hernández. If votes sent electronically fa-
Mr Hernández between early and later re-
sults. In chart one, each dot represents a vourMrNasralla byfive percentage points,
municipality. The chart shows forexample he would have had to lose byover18 points
that Mr Hernández got 36% of the votes in among votes reported on paper to explain
Whatthe data sayaboutthe integrity of La Libertad, in central Honduras, before the late shift towards the president. The
the vote count
the TSE stopped publishing results. After it odds are that that didn’t happen. 7
HE electoral commission of Honduras resumed, Mr Hernández got 49% in the
T(TSE) will not declare a winner in the same place. Mr Nasralla’s share dropped
presidential election, held on November from 51% to 36%. Our analysis shows that Canada and China
26th, until after a recount of some kind. he lost 3.5 points on average relative to Mr
The first count suggests that Juan Orlando Hernández within each municipality. The lonely Mr
Hernández won re-election. He beatSalva- Proving fraud through such analysis is
dor Nasralla, a sports broadcaster, by difficult. Statistical anomalies can have Trudeau
42.98% to 41.38%. reasonable explanations. One possible ob-
Mr Nasralla charges that the result is jection, even though municipalities are in
fraudulent. A weird and chaotic vote- general fairly homogeneous, could be that OTTAWA
China does notshare Justin Trudeau’s
counting process has strengthened that those in which Mr Hernández outper- taste in trade deals
suspicion. After releasing preliminary re- formed have a large number of voters liv-
sults from 57% of ballot boxes, which ing in urban areas that reported early and USTIN TRUDEAU, Canada’s prime min-
showed MrNasralla with a lead offive per- many livingin late-reportingrural areas. Jister, set off for China on December 2nd
centage points, the TSE stopped reporting We asked Rosemary Joyce, an anthro- amid speculation that the two countries
on November 27th without explanation. pologist at the University of California, would start free-trade talks. Canada needs
Afterpublication ofresultsresumed on the Berkeley who specialises in Honduras, to new markets because the United States is
afternoon of November 28th, Mr Nas- see if that was the case. She found that ex- turning inward. China wants to gain better
ralla’s lead disappeared. That looks fishy. planation for the vote shift implausible: access to Canada’s commodities and tech-
The Economist has analysed the results municipalities in the departments of La nologyand to seta precedentfortalks with
to figure outwhethersomeone falsified the Pazand Lempira, where MrHernándezim- other G7 countries. Although they have
count. Our findings are not conclusive, but proved significantly between early and been talking about trade for more than a
they suggest there are reasons to worry. late counting, do not have large towns. year, MrTrudeauwill return with no agree-
Ifthe results released by the TSE at each Ms Joyce’s claim is supported by our ment to start negotiations.
stage of the count were a representative analysis of census data from 2013. We Mr Trudeau’s Liberal government has
sample ofthe country, the odds ofthe shift looked at the split between rural and ur- suffered otherrecentsetbackson trade. Ata
itreported from MrNasralla in early results ban households in the 284 municipalities meeting in Danang, Vietnam, last month,
to Mr Hernández in later ones would be for which data are available, as well as the Japan blamed Canada for delaying a new
close to zero. Mr Hernández has explained proportion of houses with dirt floors, version ofthe Trans-Pacific Partnership, an
his luck by saying that the later ballots which correlates closely with the share of agreement from which Donald Trump
come from rural areas, where his National rural households. We found no relation- withdrew the United States. The snag was
Party is stronger. ship between how rural a municipality Canada’s request for protection of its cul-
To test this theory, The Economist com- was and how sharply its vote shifted to- ture. Renegotiation ofthe North American
pared results reported from municipalities wards MrHernández (see chart 2). Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the
bythe afternoon ofNovember28th with fi- Another possible objection to our ana- United States and Mexico is going badly.
nal results from the same areas. Honduras lysis is that the early reports were based on Fora countrywhose trade isthe equivalent
is divided into 298 municipalities; 288 had vote tallies that were sent electronically to of64% ofGDP, that is worrying.
published incomplete results before re- the TSE; 29% of vote tallies were not, ac- MrTrudeauthinksone wayto counter a
porting was interrupted. We looked at mu- cording to monitors from the EU. There backlash in the West against globalisation
would be to make trade agreements in-
clude strict standards for labour, the envi-
Shiftiness ronment and human rights. The European
Honduras, 2017 general election Candidate: gained vote share lost vote share Union agrees, and signed a comprehensive
trade agreement with Canada last year.
Vote share of presidential candidates by municipality, % 1 Vote shift to Hernández 2
in urban and rural areas But other trade partners, whose standards,
Juan Orlando Hernández Salvador Nasralla 20 unlike Europe’s, are very different from
Canada’s, want to keep trade deals simple.
80
Vote count as of Dec 6th 2017 (final) 60 municipality Vote shift*, % points 10 + 0 – between rurality similarto the one itconcluded with Austra-
Mostly gains after
China wants a plain-vanilla agreement
vote-count
interruption
lia in 2015. “Beijing is unyielding that non-
La Libertad
economic factors have no place in trade
40
deals,” wrote Charles Burton, a scholar of
China, in an assessment of the talks. The
No correlation
United States is receptive to labour and en-
10
20
and swing to
Mostly losses
Hernández
competition from Mexico), but is uninter-
0
ested in Canada’s ideas for incorporating
0 20 40 60 80 0 20 after interruption 80 20 0 Less rural 40 60 More rural vironmental standards (as a way to blunt
40
60
80 100
20
Vote count as of Nov 28th 2017 Households with dirt floors, % indigenous rights into trade deals and
Sources: TSE; The Economist *Between Nov 28th and Dec 6th 2017
makinglabourlaws more union-friendly. 1