The 90-day campaigning to select the Philippines’ leaders that will govern the country for the next six years began yesterday.
Four are the leading choices for president—Senator Grace Poe, Vice President Jejomar Binay, former Department of Interior and Local Government Secretary Manuel Araneta Roxas, and long-time Davao City Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte.
Analysts are claiming the election is anybody’s game. Not true. The frontrunner is obvious—Senator Grace.
This is because despite her problems with her being disqualified by Comelec as a candidate and questions about her qualifications or lack of them, like her dubious natural-born citizenship and her apparent lack of 10-year residency immediately preceding the May 9, 2016 election, she managed to top two major surveys last January 2016—the Pulse Asia survey of Jan. 24-28, 2016 and the Standard Poll survey of Jan. 27-Feb. 4, 2016.
Both surveys have a margin of error of 2 percent and large sample sizes (1,800 for Pulse Asia) and 3,000 for Standard-Laylo. So you can consider them better-than-average and reliable polls.
In Pulse Asia, Senator Poe tops with 30 percent picking her nationwide, 7 percentage points ahead of VP Binay who has 23 percent. Roxas and Duterte are tied with identical 20 percent of voters choosing them if elections were held today. On a voter turnout of 75 percent of 54 million or 40.5 million, 7 percentage points is a huge advantage—2.835 million votes.
In Standard-Laylo, Poe is also No. 1 with 29 percent, 7 percentage points ahead of No. 2, surprise, a tie between VP Binay and Sec Mar, with identical 22 percent. Again, Grace’s margin is 7 percentage points or 2.835 million votes.
Instructive are the two main reasons in the Standard-Laylo survey given by those voting for the freshman senator despite the defects in her qualifications—they want to try her style of governance (30 percent say so) and they hope she will continue the good deeds of her father (19 percent), a total of 49 percent, exceeding the total of the two main reasons why voters don’t like her—19 percent say she is inexperienced while another 16 percent say she has unproven competence. So despite Grace’s lack of experience and apparent incompetence, voters still want her. Now, that’s charisma.
Grace seems to be a beneficiary of fanciful mythmaking. Voters think she is a good person and can manage the country. Voters also think her father has done good deeds (what those are is not clear to me, except that in the one time I interviewed FPJ for an hour when he was a presidential candidate in 2004, he came across as a very sincere and earnest person).
Conversely, Binay is a victim of myth, which is that he is very corrupt. Corrupt too is his family. Surely, the Binays cannot last that long in politics (29 years) if they are venal and corrupt.
The 29 percent who say they won’t vote for Binay point to corruption issues, while another 22 percent note his family’s involvement in anomalous transactions. That’s 51 percent or majority, exceeding, though by a small margin, the total percentage of the two main reasons why voters want him—20 percent because he has done well in Makati, and 19 percent because he has broad experience in governance, a total of 49 percent.
Mar Roxas polled 20 percent in Pulse Asia, the same as Duterte’s. In the Standard-Laylo survey, Mar tied with Binay. That means the second placer could either be Mar Roxas (unbelievable) or Binay (credible).
The Roxas believers want him because he could continue President BS Aquino’s programs like cash for the poor (42 percent) and they want to try his style of governance (13 percent). Only 11 percent say they vote for Mar because of his broad experience.
About 42 percent like Duterte because he is a disciplinarian (22 percent of 42 percent), and he could stop the drugs menace (20 percent).
Interestingly, Roxas and Duterte are strong because of regionalism. About 35 percent of Visayan voters will go for Roxas; that’s 3.3 million votes. About 44 percent of Mindanao voters will go for Duterte; that’s 4.15 million votes. The 3.3 million votes of Roxas in the Visayas is 37 percent of his total votes of 8.91 million. The 4.15 million Mindanao votes of Duterte is about 51 percent of his total votes. This implies that both Roxas and Duterte do not have the broad appeal of either Poe or Binay.
Poe and Binay are tied in Metro Manila (NCR), 33 percent vs. 32 percent, in Pulse Asia but the senator is far ahead of the VP, 35 percent vs 22 in the national capital. This could be the result of sampling error.
Makati, I assume, is represented by one only respondent (yes, one person in a big city will represent that city). If the Pulse Asia pollster chooses every third person as respondent, and that third person happens to be a squatter (where Binay has 30 percent of the vote), that persons skews the result in favor of veep. If the third person happens to be middle class or D, where Poe has 32 percent of the vote, to Binay’s 22, that third person affects Poe positively, in the overall results. How do you cure the sampling error? Well, you keep interviewing more people—which makes the survey a very expensive exercise.
This makes the Standard-Laylo survey more accurate. Its Metro Manila sample size is 300 (or 10 percent of 3,000), which means Makati could be represented by at least 10 people. More than 3 of those 10 want Poe for president.
That is why it is important for pollsters to disclose their sample sizes by city or town. For all we know, the reason why Roxas is strong in the Visayas is because the pollster concentrated on getting respondents from the Capiz area. And the reason why Duterte has nearly half of Mindanao is that most of the respondents asked were from the Davao area.
This explains why Poe and Binay are such viable frontrunners. They have broad appeal. In the Standard-Laylo January poll, Poe has 35 percent of NCR votes, 37 percent of North Central Luzon, 38 percent of South Luzon/Bicol, 23 percent of Visayas, and 17 percent of Mindanao. Visayas and Mindanao in the MST survey have identical 23 percent share of national votes.
For his part, Binay in January had 22 percent of Metro Manila (same as Duterte’s), 31 percent of North Central Luzon, 23 percent of South Luzon/Bicol, 17 percent of Visayas, and 16 percent of Mindanao.
The combined voting weight of North/Central Luzon (700 respondents or 23.3 percent) and South Luzon/Bicol (also 23.3 percent) or 46.6 percent is enough to neutralize either Visayas (23.3 percent) or Mindanao (23.3 percent).
Conclusion: The candidate who dominates Metro Manila (which has 10 percent of overall votes or 4 million ) will win the presidency in 2016.
So far, per surveys, that’s Grace Poe with 35 percent or 1.4 million votes (against Binay’s 22 or less than 900,000 votes) in Standard-Laylo; and 33 percent (against Binay’s 32 percent) in Pulse Asia. It seems to me about 2 million voters will decide the election. They are in Metro Manila.