MISINFORMATION is hurting the campaign of presidential aspirant Senator Grace Poe, as some voters thought the senator has already disqualified from the 2016 presidential race, a Pulse Asia official said Tuesday.
Speaking to the ANC news channel, Pulse Asia research director Ana Maria Tabunda said this could be why Poe dropped to second place in the Dec. 4 to 11 Pulse Asia survey of presidential preferences to Binay’s 33 percent.
The December survey showed Poe statistically tied with Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who had 23 percent.
Liberal Party standard bearer Manuel Roxas II was at third place with 17 percent, down from 20 percent in the September survey, while Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago had 4 percent.
Tabunda said the survey was conducted after the Commission on Elections Second Division came out with a ruling to cancel Poe’s Certificate of Candidacy over her alleged failure to meet the residency requirement for presidential candidates.
The ANC report said the Comelec’s First Division also ruled on another petition to cancel Poe’s CoC on the basis of her natural-born status; the decision was released during the survey period.
The Poe camp has said it will appeal the decision before the Supreme Court.
Tabunda said the Comelec rulings affected voter preference for Poe.
“It is not just the thought that she might be disqualified. Some think she is already disqualified,” she told ANC.
“There is some misinformation there. Some of them are confused. One example given by a field interviewer—one respondent was saying, ‘Poe is not running,’ so she was picking somebody else,” Tabunda said.
Tabunda said the Poe camp must be more aggressive in explaining to voters the status of the disqualification cases before the Comelec.
Tabunda said Poe is still doing well despite the misinformation.
“It is a question of—can she still regain some of that support [if] she is allowed to run…? Can she still regain those votes that she has lost temporarily right now?” she asked.
Poe spokesman Mayor Rex Gatchalian said the entire campaign team accepts and respects the survey results.
“It serves as an inspiration and roadmap for us to calibrate our next movies. We will keep on explaining to the electorate that Senator Poe has not been disqualified…Whatever happens it will go to the Supreme Court,” Gatchalian said.
Tabunda also pointed out problems affecting candidates such as Poe and Duterte have benefited Binay, whose 14 percentage point gain she described as big.
“If you remember, Binay was the frontrunner but as other candidates joined the race, he lost some of the support. But now there are questions about disqualification, so because there is doubt, some of those votes are going back to Binay,” Tabunda said in Filipino in an interview on radio dzMM.
Tabunda said Poe ate away at Binay’s numbers after her name first cropped up in the presidential race. She said Duterte’s entry in the presidential surveys also affected Poe and Binay’s numbers in Mindanao.
Tabunda also noted that Duterte might have received more support from voters since September, but the flak over cursing the Pope hurt him.
A Pulse Asia survey conducted last month showed that Duterte was the most preferred presidential candidate for Metro Manila voters until the cursing incident.
Tabunda said Binay also benefited from the relative silence on the corruption allegations against him, as there were more news reports on the issues against the other candidates.
In all this time, she said, Binay never stopped working to woo voters before Election Day.
Tabunda said administration bet Roxas had to work on his messaging.
