Nearly one month of this campaign period was covered by the Micheletti de facto government Decree PCM-M-016-2009, signed on 22 September 2009 and rescinded on 19 October 2009.

The trade unionist[11] Garifuna leader Bernard Martínez Valerio was the Innovation and Unity Party (PINU) candidate.

[11] Another trade union leader, Carlos Humberto Reyes, one of the coordinators of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Contra el Golpe de Estado en Honduras, was an independent candidate for the election[13][14] but formally withdrew in order not to legitimise the coup d'état and what he and his supporters perceived would be fraudulent elections.

[19] Over thirty thousand security personnel were involved in running the election, including 12,000 military, 14,000 police officers and 5000 reservists.

[24] On election day, police and military suppressed an anti-election rally in San Pedro Sula, with reports of one death plus injuries and arrests.

[27] However, observers were sent by the centre-right European People's Party, who reported a "high degree of civic maturity and exemplar democratic behaviour" during the elections.

[35] While exiled President Manuel Zelaya called for a boycott of the election, turnout ranged from around 30% in poorer areas to 70% in more wealthy communities.

Hundreds of people made a noisy drive-by protest in Tegucigalpa on 1 December to symbolise their rejection of the elections and to highlight that the turnout estimates of over 60% were inaccurate.

[37] Marvin Ponce, a member of Congress from the Democratic Unification Party, said that it was not possible to hold the elections in the aftermath of the coup d'état.

[15][16][18] At the time of Reyes' withdrawal, the Honduran newspapers El Tiempo and La Tribuna showed Reyes' right hand in a plaster cast[15][16] due to an injury sustained during his 30 July beating by Honduran security forces under the control of the de facto Micheletti government.

[41] Canadian investigative journalist Jesse Freeston released a series of three videos before and after the elections them of being "coup laundering".

Freeston concludes that nobody knows how many Hondurans turned out, since all four major international election observers (UN, EU, Carter Center, and OAS) all refused to participate.

[42] The videos also exposed the police attack on an anti-election protest in San Pedro Sula, the arrest of a man for possession of anti-election posters in Tegucigalpa, a letter the military sent to all the mayors in Honduras seeking contact information of anyone involved in the National People's Resistance Front, the shutting down of anti-coup media outlets Radio Globo and Canal 36, and the targeted assassinations of anti-coup community organizers.

[4] On 10 August, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) also declared that it would not recognise the results of elections held while the de facto Micheletti government remained in power.

[46] The victory of Porfirio Lobo Sosa was quickly recognized by the United States, which increased military and police aid to the government, despite much of Latin America continuing to view him as an illegal pretender to the Honduran presidency.

[49][50][51][52] On 30 November at the 19th Ibero-American Summit in Estoril, Portugal the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela announced they would not recognize the elections whereas Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama said that they would.