A majority of Mexicans approve of President Felipe Calderon's first two months in office, according to a new poll. A pro-business conservative, Calderon won office last year with just 35.9 percent of the vote -- slightly ahead of his leftist rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, with 35.3 percent. But in the poll, conducted by the polling firm Ipsos-Bimsa and published Tuesday in El Universal newspaper, 58 percent of Mexicans said Calderon has done a good job so far. Calderon took office Dec. 1 with promises to tackle the country's widespread poverty and expand social programs, the foundation of Lopez Obrador's platform. He also has sent thousands of federal troops into several states to fight mounting drug violence.
The poll did not shed much light on which of his policies are popular with the public, however. In the one policy area addressed in the survey -- rising tortilla prices -- Calderon fared poorly, with just a third of respondents saying he had taken effective action. The price of tortillas, a staple of the Mexican diet especially among the poor, surged 14 percent in 2006 and has continued to rise in the first weeks of 2007.