Mexico's Sheinbaum leads rivals for ruling party candidacy -poll

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum holds a 10 percentage point lead in voter preferences in the contest to be the Mexican ruling party candidate for the 2024 presidential election, an opinion poll showed on Thursday.

According to the June 30-July 4 survey by polling firm Parametria, the ruling National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) has a big lead over the opposition in the run-up to next June's election, suggesting its candidate is favorite to win.

Sheinbaum and former Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard are the top contenders for the candidacy, which MORENA is due to announce on Sept. 6 after national polling to pick a winner.

The Parametria poll showed that among the general public, Sheinbaum had 30% support, while Ebrard had 20%. Their four other competitors had 30% between them, and the remaining fifth of respondents backed no one or expressed no opinion.

The survey was based on 800 face-to-face interviews, and had a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.5 percentage points, Parametria said.

Support for MORENA has been buttressed by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's personal popularity. He cannot run again because Mexican presidents are by law restricted to a single six-year term.

The poll showed that once voters expressing no preference are factored out, MORENA had 58% support, with two allied parties receiving a further 6% in total.

By contrast, combined backing for three opposition parties ranging from the center-left to the center-right that aim to field a joint candidate in 2024 stood at just 26%.

The poll showed that Sheinbaum and Ebrard were comfortably the most popular of the presidential contenders. The balance of positive opinion for Sheinbaum was 66%, and for Ebrard 51%. The opposition hopefuls featured all had negative balances.

Ebrard was the best known contender, recognized by 69% of respondents, while Sheinbaum was familiar to 62%.

Parametria data showed that in a head-to-head contest, Ebrard led Sheinbaum as recently as last August-September. Since then, however, Sheinbaum has moved ahead and now has an advantage of around 18 percentage points.

Still, a separate daily tracking poll by polling firm Consulta Mitofsky has shown Ebrard recently gaining ground on Sheinbaum. On June 30, Sheinbaum was 10.5 percentage points ahead of Ebrard. By July 12, that gap had closed to 8.1 points.

(Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Leslie Adler)