MEXICO CITY, April 19, 2018 (Reuters) - Mexican leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has widened 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 per cent, 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 per cent. Running third was Jose Antonio Meade, candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), whose backing remained steady at 18 per cent, the poll showed. The figures for the three stripped out the 19 per cent of respondents who expressed no preference. The poll surveyed 1,200 voters and had a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points. A separate survey by polling firm Mitofsky published late on Wednesday also showed Lopez Obrador pulling further ahead. In that poll, Lopez Obrador garnered 31.9 per cent support, up from 29.5 per cent in a Mitofsky survey last month. Anaya trailed in second with 20.8 per cent and Meade polled at 16.9 per cent. Lopez Obrador, a 64-year-old former mayor of Mexico City, has capitalised on widespread disenchantment with the PRI over political corruption, rising levels of violence and sluggish economic growth to consolidate his lead in recent weeks. He says Mexico should reduce its economic dependence on foreign powers, and has vowed to put US President Donald Trump "in his place" if he wins. Trump's barbs against Mexican immigrants and complaints that Mexico has taken advantage of the United States over trade have made him very unpopular south of the border, and a Lopez Obrador presidency could usher in a testier bilateral relationship. Support for Anaya, a former leader of the centre-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.
