Thirty-one percent of about 1,200 registered voters polled during the first half of April by veteran pollster Social Weather Stations (SWS) said they would vote for Roco.
Action star Fernando Poe Jr. — who is being pushed by the political opposition headed by deposed President Joseph Estrada to join the race — came in second with 26 percent. Poe has repeatedly said he is not running.
Senate President Pro Tempore Juan Flavier, of the ruling Lakas-NUCD, drew support from 13 percent closely followed by Estrada ally Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who has support from 12 percent.
Businessman Eduardo Cojuangco, who is being endorsed by some quarters in the administration Lakas-NUCD, received support from only six percent. The rest of the respondents said they were either undecided or had no candidate in mind.
In January, two parties in President Arroyo’s political alliance — Reporma and Probinsiya Muna Development Initiative — endorsed Roco as the candidate of the People Power Coalition because he consistently topped opinion surveys.
However, the PPC’s dominant party, Mrs. Arroyo’s Lakas-NUCD, may pick someone else, party officials said earlier, but did not rule out Roco.
Flavier said in February that he would bid for the presidency if nominated by the party but changed his mind last week, saying he has very little support from party members. He also complained of health problems.
Lacson, meanwhile, is the only bet so far from the opposition, which has been encouraging Poe to run because of his film celebrity status.
Lakas, which Mrs. Arroyo co-chairs with Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., is in a quandary after she announced In Baguio City on Dec. 30 that she was withdrawing from the presidential race.
Mrs. Arroyo said she wanted to focus on fixing the country’s sluggish economy during her remaining 18 months in office and avoid being distracted by politics.
She later told a television interview that she would endorse a successor in December or five months before the 2004 elections.
Roco made a strong showing in the 1998 polls, taking the women and youth votes and placing third — behind Estrada and De Venecia — despite the lack of a political machinery. He ran for senator in 1992 and was re-elected in 1995.
He was appointed education secretary by Mrs. Arroyo shortly after she replaced Estrada, who was ousted in a military-backed popular protest in January 2001.
In early August, Roco stunned Malacañang when he resigned in a fit of anger after Mrs. Arroyo endorsed an investigation by the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission into his alleged improprieties for using Department of Education funds to publish posters bearing his photograph.
His complaint was that Mrs. Arroyo lacked basic courtesy in informing him about the probe.
Roco distanced himself from Mrs. Arroyo but mended fences in March.
The probe stemmed from a complaint by an employees’ union at the department, accusing Roco of using the posters to advance his bid for the presidency.
Roco rejected speculation that Mrs. Arroyo — who was then planning to run in 2004 — endorsed the investigation to decimate him in case he decided to make a second bid for the presidency.
The speculation followed the results of an opinion poll by IBON Foundation released on Aug. 1 — the day Mrs. Arroyo endorsed the probe — which showed that Roco would trounce her if an election were held at the time the survey was conducted.