This Sunday, Nov. 27, Honduras holds its presidential election. This is an important election because it’s seen by some analysts as the bellwether of how the all-important next 13 months of elections go in Latin America. Will Latam swing further left or move right with these elections? Honduras is expected to give some sort of indication.

But to read Boz’s writeup – and he’s the only one I know covering it (and doing a nice job) – along with all his links – suggests that this isn’t some great argument about Left and Right, it’s more a conglomeration of local issues, culminating in the one that really bothers people: Personal Security. The Hondurans in my own neighborhood in El Norte (and there are a lot of them) say you can’t go out outside back in Honduras, it’s just not safe, and this seems to be a justifiable voter obsession.

Both candidates say they will create more jobs, presumably to give Honduras’ crime-inclined something to do. Fair enough. But then personal security intrudes. The more right-leaning one connected with the incumbent party wants to reinstate the death penalty; the more left-leaning one wants life imprisonment.

But making it a right-left battle isn’ta good way of characterizing things: The problem with calling this a contest between left and right, is that the Catholic Church – which is influential in Honduras – says ‘no’ to death penalty. That’s not just the opinion of the lefty Cardinal they have in Tegucigalpa, whom I don’t like, it’s an opinion that pretty much extends into the conservative gamut of the Church too.

So, people who are very devout won’t pick the conservative guy, never mind their politics. Maybe this is a contest of how Catholic Honduras is, rather than how leftwing or rightwing? It all comes down to local politics in the case of this country.

Bellwether? Maybe just Opening Bell is a better way to charactarize it. People vote based on a combination of little things and by what’s important in their immediate lives. Read Boz’s analysis here.