The polling company Pulse Asia on Tuesday predicted a victory for presidential frontrunner Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, saying that its surveys show that a majority of the 65 million registered voters have already decided at this time and no amount of convincing would make them change their minds about their preferred bets.
The company offered its prediction after its latest survey, conducted from April 16-21, showed Marcos getting 56 percent of its 2,400 respondents.
In a radio interview on radio dzRH, Ana Maria Tabunda, research director of Pulse Asia, also insisted that she believes that the result of the survey could also be the final result of the May 9 elections.
“Even if you change a little, there will be no upset. It will be really difficult for the other contenders to catch up,” Tabunda predicted.
Asked if the voting population has already decided, she answered: “It looks like that.”
She said 80 percent of those who said they preferred Marcos said they would not change their vote.
Tabunda said this was the first time a presidential candidate has garnered a majority of the respondents.
She added that Marcos’s consistently high numbers are historic since it was the first time since they started conducting pre-election surveys that a presidential candidate has been able to maintain his 50-plus percentage voter preference throughout the duration of the presidential race.
Meanwhile, Pulse Asia’s chief Ronnie Holmes told ABS-CBN that the polling company has used the same probability sampling method for the last two decades, and do not set quotas on respondents based on age or educational attainment.
Holmes was responding to opinion pieces written by statistician Romulo A. Virola, who said that some groups are overrepresented in the Pulse Asia’s February 2022 surveys, while others are underrepresented.
Virola is the former secretary-general of the then-National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) of the Philippines, now part of the Philippine Statistics Authority.
Holmes said with their sampling method, it is really possible to have more respondents from a certain age group or bracket, since they only need the respondents to be over the age of 18, a registered voter, and likely to vote in the May 9 elections.
“In this kind of sampling, you can get respondents from different groups and the number may not be necessarily proportionate to the size of the group,” he added.
Other sampling methods are available, but these would cost more and entail more work, he said.
Holmes said respondents are chosen randomly.
He also said he would look into Virola’s study and will write his response.
In the April 16 to 21 survey, Vice President Leni Robredo came in second after Marcos, with 23 percent, one percentage point down from her showing in March.
Pulse Asia said it has correctly predicted the results of the country’s national elections since it began polling in 1999.
