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News > Latin America

800,000 Young People in Honduras Are Eligible to Vote Sunday

  • Workers load a truck with voting materials for further distribution throughout the country for the upcoming presidential election, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras November 20, 2017.

    Workers load a truck with voting materials for further distribution throughout the country for the upcoming presidential election, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras November 20, 2017. | Photo: Reuters

Published 25 November 2017
Opinion

The young people’s ballots comprise over 13 percent of the nation’s six million voters this year.

According to the Honduran National Registry, 800,000 young people between the ages of 18 and 25 are eligible to vote in this Sunday’s elections, 600,000 of whom are eligible for the first time. 

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While only a small portion of the nation’s younger people are out campaigning for the Opposition Alliance, headed by Salvador Nasralla and Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, the leftist coalition is still hopeful that the younger age bracket will turn out to vote and vote for them.

The young people’s vote is particularly pivotal this election cycle because they comprise over 13 percent of the nation’s 6 million voters this year and candidates are going after what’s important to the millennial generation in Honduras: jobs and safety. 

Voters and candidates remember the previous presidential election where the current right-wing president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who is re-running this term, won by a mere 200,000 votes. So, 800,000 is an important number to vye for.

Honduran candidates are using social media platforms to campaign to capture the below 30 voter age bracket. In turn, youth organizations of Honduras have said to candidates and political parties that they want their issues taken into account. 

While Honduras in the 1980s consistently saw an over 70 percent voter turnout, during the 1990s and 2000s this number fell. In 2005 only 64 percent of the population voted, and in 2009, 50 percent. 

That trend seems to be shifting so that in the last election, 2013 only 39 percent didn’t vote. Electoral authorities are hoping for a 65 percent turnout on Sunday.

Citizens will vote not only for a president and vice president, but also for 129 National Assembly members and nearly 300 mayors across the country.

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