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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | May 2007 
Calderon Popularity Jumps in New Poll
 Reuters
| | El Universal said only 17 of the 68 points Calderon received in the poll were from people who strongly supported his performance. The rest is considered a "soft" approval rating. |
Mexican President Felipe Calderon's approval rating jumped by 10 percentage points as memories fade of last year's bitter election fight when he was accused of winning by fraud, a newspaper said on Wednesday.
An opinion poll published by El Universal daily gave conservative Calderon 68 percent, up from 58 percent in its last poll in February.
The survey showed many supporters of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who lost to Calderon by under a percentage point in the July election, believed the president was doing a good job.
Mexico's top election court and foreign observers rejected Lopez Obrador's claim that Calderon won the vote by cheating.
El Universal said only 17 of the 68 points Calderon received in the poll were from people who strongly supported his performance. The rest is considered a "soft" approval rating.
Calderon's predecessor, Vicente Fox, regularly scored higher in opinion polls even though Mexicans mostly did not think Fox did a good job on key issues like the economy or job creation.
Calderon has won praise for an aggressive plan to combat violent drug cartels and for trying to curb rising prices of staple foods like tortillas.
Seventy-three percent of those questioned in the El Universal poll said they thought drug violence had increased this year after Calderon sent thousands of troops to combat cartels in the most violent states.
Thirty-three percent said they thought Calderon was winning the drug war, down two points from February, but still more than the percentage who think he is losing.
Calderon is also trying to get Congress to pass fiscal reforms aimed at reducing the country's economic dependency on crude oil exports.
The survey questioned 1,050 people between April 26 and May 1 and had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points. |
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