Mexico leftist opens up 22 point lead in presidency race -poll

By Miguel Gutierrez MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has extended his lead in the race to win the July 1 presidential election, opening up a gap of 22 percentage points, a poll by newspaper Reforma showed on Wednesday. The April 12-15 voter poll showed Lopez Obrador winning 48 percent, a jump of six points from a February survey by Reforma. His nearest rival, Ricardo Anaya, who heads a right-left coalition, dropped by six points to 26 percent. Running third was Jose Antonio Meade, candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), whose backing remained steady at 18 percent, the poll showed. The figures for the three stripped out the 19 percent of respondents who expressed no preference. The poll surveyed 1,200 voters and had a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points. Lopez Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City, has capitalized on widespread disenchantment with the PRI over political corruption, rising levels of violence and sluggish economic growth to build his lead. Support for Anaya, a former leader of the center-right National Action Party (PAN), has slipped since he came under attack from rivals over allegations of financial impropriety in a property deal in his home state of Queretaro. Anaya, 39, has denied any wrongdoing. Runner-up in the last two presidential contests, Lopez Obrador has promised an "austere" budget, to be achieved by battling corruption and cutting government waste. He has threatened to undo the centerpiece of President Enrique Pena Nieto's economic agenda, the opening of the oil and gas industry to private investment. However, several top advisers say he is unlikely to make major changes. The survey also showed the 64-year-old leftist comfortably beating his two main rivals in direct head-to-head contests. Facing Anaya, he wins by a margin of 51 percent to 31 percent, and against Meade, age 49, by 57 percent to 22 percent. Lopez Obrador's party, the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), is poised to become the largest in Congress, four years after it was formally registered, the poll showed. No party has held an outright majority since 1997 and it was not clear MORENA would do so either under the mix of direct election and proportional representation Mexico uses. MORENA was projected to win 37 percent of support in voting for the lower house of Congress, the PAN 21 percent and the PRI 17 percent, the survey showed. (Editing by Dave Graham and Steve Orlofsky)