Manila: Philippine presidential candidate Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino has arrested a slide in support while his nearest rival, Manual "Manny" Villar, lost ground ahead of elections on May 10, an opinion poll showed on Monday.
The Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey, conducted on March 19-22 before the start of campaigning for Congress and local positions last Friday, also showed administration candidate Gilberto "Gibo" Tedoro remained a distant fourth in polling.
Support for opposition senator Aquino, son of the country's democracy icon, Corazon "Cory" Aquino, stood at 37 per cent, basically steady with his February reading of 36 per cent although well below a support level of 60 percent last September.
Billionaire senator Villar dropped six points to 28 per cent, and former president Joseph Estrada, forced out of office in 2001, saw his support rise four points to 19 per cent.
Support for Teodoro, a former defence secretary in outgoing President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's administration, was unchanged at 6 per cent, the SWS poll showed.
Major campaign issues are corruption, poverty and managing the economy and a large budget deficit.
Aquino portrays himself as a "change" candidate, promising to fight corruption, reform development spending and improve transparency, and has said he would investigate allegations of corruption against Arroyo.
His Liberal Party lacks the national scale of the ruling Lakas-Kampi coalition, whose grassroots organisation could boost Teodoro's ratings now that local campaigning has started.
However, if Teodoro is unable to lift his ratings soon, analysts believe Arroyo's supporters could swing behind Villar.
The SWS results are very similar to support levels in a late February poll by Pulse Asia, another independent pollster.
The opinion poll results were posted on the SWS website http://www.sws.org.ph/ The survey of 2,100 people has a 2 percent margin of error.
