Chilean right favored to win presidency: poll

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Conservative billionaire Sebastian Pinera held onto his lead in a new poll on Wednesday and looks set to win Chile's December presidential election, ending two decades of center-left rule.

The Ipsos poll showed Pinera with 37 percent of the vote against 27 percent for Eduardo Frei, the government's candidate, and 18 percent for Marco Enriquez-Ominami, a leftist who broke away from the government's ranks to run independently.

Pinera and Enriquez-Ominami are positioning themselves as the candidates of "change," although neither is proposing policies that radically differ from those of outgoing President Michelle Bachelet.

Despite his third-place standing in this latest poll, 36-year-old Enriquez-Ominami has become the man to watch in this race as his approval ratings have shot up dramatically in the past several weeks and three previous polls showed him virtually tied with Frei for second place.

His candidacy has split the left and ensured that for the first time since the end of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in 1990 the governing coalition -- a marriage of Christian Democrat and socialist parties -- has little chance of winning.

If no candidate wins more than half the vote in the December 13 vote, the top two contenders will compete in a run-off on January 10.

The Ipsos poll has Pinera winning the second round with 44.5 percent of the vote against 39.6 percent for Frei.

Bachelet, a socialist, has record high approval ratings but is not allowed to run again. Her popularity has not rubbed off on Frei, a senator who was president from 1994-2000.

Pinera, a long-time figure on the Chilean political landscape, owns several companies and has interest in LAN airlines, Chilevision television and the Colo Colo soccer club.

Ipsos interviewed 1,255 registered voters from September 16 to October 6. The poll has a margin of error of 2.7 percentage points.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Martinez; writing by Louise Egan, editing by Jackie Frank)