By Eliane Portillo

The man who narrowly lost Mexico’s last presidential election will try again next year after winning an opinion poll the results of which were released Wednesday by the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).

Six thousand voters were polled, half by an agency picked by the winner, Andres Manuel López Obrador, and the other half by an agency chosen by his rival, Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard. “The survey results are in my favor ... I will participate in the 2012 presidential election,” López Obrador said at a news conference.

Ebrard conceded, saying he wanted to put an end to divisions within the party. “A divided left would only take Mexico to the precipice,” he said.

The party known as the PRD is the first of the three major parties to choose a candidate before the campaign officially begins in February.

Conflicts among Mexico’s leftist factions are common and last week, internal PRD elections in five states were suspended after mutual accusations of anomalies between supporters of López Obrador and another group favoring Ebrard.

The completion of the survey, was conducted by two separate pollsters, suggests that the political left will skip the process of internal pre-selection, which the electoral authority, Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), has scheduled for February for all parties.

Ebrard said that the left has to make every effort to unite for the 2012 election. “(López Obrador) knows that he can count on my sincere support and solidarity,” he said.

López Obrador lost to President Felipe Calderón of the conservative National Action Party by half a percentage point in 2006.