Mexico's Calderon approval stays at 65 percent

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Felipe Calderon's approval rating held at a comfortable 65 percent in a newspaper poll on Saturday, although he lost support for his war against violent drug cartels.

Approval of Calderon, who only narrowly won last year's presidential vote, was the same in Saturday's Reforma newspaper poll as in June, and up from 58 percent in March.

Calderon's approval ratings are far higher than a year ago, when Mexico was bitterly divided over his razor-thin election victory against leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who claimed vote fraud.

In Saturday's poll, Mexicans gave conservative Calderon high marks for health and education, but approved less of his crackdown on drug gangs. About 1,600 people have been killed in battles among rival cartels over lucrative cocaine smuggling routes.

Since taking office in December, Calderon has deployed thousands of soldiers to attack the drug syndicates but opposition legislators have criticized him for using the military to fight crime, citing reports of rights abuses.

Calderon has canceled his annual state of the union address on Saturday because leftist lawmakers who refuse to recognize him as president threatened to stop him entering Congress.

Instead, Calderon plans to hand a written report into Congress then give a speech on Sunday at another location.

Asked to rate Calderon, a former lawyer, on a scale of 1 to 10, respondents ranked him 6.8, the same as in June.

The survey polled 1,515 people with a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.