Got it working, seemed to be a SELinux error, fixed with:
# setenforce 0
For reference, we have these packages installed in a virtualenv:
-e git://github.com/toastdriven/django-haystack.git@366e7489169d460d36ac4d942c22c0e97e58c26b#egg=django_haystack-master
elasticsearch==1.0.0
And elasticsearch-1.1.1-1.noarch through yum on CentOS 6
Edit: The more general fix that doesn't broadly disable SELinux:
# setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect on