In the greatest test before the presidential balloting in July, leftist former mayor of Mexico City Manuel Lopez Obrador of the PRD has emerged as ten points higher than his closest rival in Vicente Fox’s PRI party and the center-right PAN’s candidate Felipe Calderon, winning the state election in Ecatepec, a horseshoe-shaped suburb of Mexico City with over a million inhabitants. Lopez Obrador is popular among working class Mexicans for his social reform programs and public works in Mexico City proper.