AMONG the five candidates seeking the presidency, voters believe Senator Grace Poe and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte are the ones who can solve the country’s most pressing problems, The Standard Poll conducted from Feb. 24 to March 1 showed.
A quarter of the 3,000 respondents—all of whom are registered voters with biometrics and who said they are sure to vote in the May elections—ranked poverty as the most important problem facing the country’s next top leader, followed by corruption (19 percent), illegal drugs (16 percent), unemployment (11 percent), high prices of goods and services (8 percent), criminality (6 percent), low salary (4 percent), and traffic (2 percent).
Poe was the top choice of Filipinos when asked who among the candidates could solve poverty (27 percent), corruption (26 percent), unemployment (27 percent), high prices of goods and services (26 percent) and traffic (38 percent).
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With the survey’s national margin of error of +/- 1.8 percent, Poe was statistically tied with Vice President Jejomar Binay who got a 28-percent rating on the issue of solving poverty, Duterte (27 percent) on the issue of corruption, and Liberal Party standard bearer Manuel Roxas II (25 percent) on the issue of high prices of goods and services.
The tough-talking Duterte, on the other hand, was the choice of voters for solving the problem of illegal drugs (31 percent), criminality (31 percent) and low salary (36 percent).
In terms of trust rating, Poe led the other presidential aspirants with 50 percent, followed by Roxas and Binay who were tied with 36 percent each, Duterte with 34 percent, and Senator Miriam Santiago with 17 percent.
The top reason of voters for choosing Poe were as follows: they want to try her style of governance and they like her platform (40 percent) and they think she is a good person like her father, the late actor Fernando Poe Jr. and she can fulfill his promises to the people (26 percent).
Those who said they will vote for Duterte cited his track record in fighting illegal drugs and crimes (34 percent) and his iron-fist policy in governance (34 percent) while respondents who backed Binay’s presidential bid said the Vice President can replicate Makati’s success nationwide (21 percent).
On the other hand, supporters of Roxas said he might be able to continue the programs of the Aquino administration (38 percent) while voters who chose Santiago said they liked that she talks straight and is principled (36 percent).
While Poe remained the frontrunner in the survey with 26 percent of the respondents saying they will vote for her if the elections were held today, she is now statistically tied with Duterte (24 percent) and Binay (23 percent).
Roxas came in close second at 22 percent while Santiago trailed with only 2 percent.
The survey, conducted by The Standard’s resident pollster Junie Laylo, covered 79 provinces and 40 highly urbanized cities across the country and the 17 cities in the National Capital Region.