Latest Russian opinion poll shows Medvedev ahead

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin's chosen successor, Dmitry Medvedev, has a commanding lead ahead of Russia's presidential election with 63 percent support, an opinion poll showed on Wednesday.

Medvedev, who receives full Kremlin backing and wide coverage on state television, was more than 50 percentage points ahead of the three other candidates a month before the March 2 vote, state-owned pollster VTsIOM said.

His nearest challenger, nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky was up 1.5 percent at 7 percent while Communist Party Leader Gennady Zyuganov was in third place with 7 percent, up 1.7 percent.

In fourth place was Andrei Bogdanov of the small Democratic Party who received 1 percent of the vote.

The survey was conducted on February 2-3 among 1,600 Russian voters in 46 regions and has a 3.4 percent margin of error.

"There are several reasons for Medvedev's success, but the most important one is Putin's support. When we did a survey in December, 57 percent said they would choose whomever was supported by Putin," said VTsIOM's spokeswoman, Olga Komentyuk.

Komentyuk said Zhirinovsky was pulling ahead of Zyuganov in the poll, although the Communist Party in past elections usually came second to the main party of power.

VTsIOM's latest poll takes account of committed voters, those who will not participate and those who have not made up their mind. It did not calculate separate figures for committed voters only.

For more on Russia's presidential election, please see our blog "Operation Successor" at blogs.reuters.com/russia.

(Reporting by Conor Sweeney; editing by Elizabeth Piper)