SENATOR Miriam Defensor-Santiago has no political advertisements but she remains the top choice of the students of the University of the Philippines at Los Baños and other young people.
Santiago said Sunday she was elated that students seemed to consider her the only choice in the May elections as seen in the results of the various presidential surveys.
“When a candidate leads a survey, it means that she is doing something right in her campaign,” Santiago said.
“But when a candidate is almost unrivaled in a survey, that means the voters see something wrong in the other choices.”
Since the filing of Certificates of Candidacy in October, Santiago has been the preferred presidential candidate in all the campus polls.
“Campus surveys are the pulse of the youth vote, a decisive factor in the presidential elections,” said Santiago who is running under her own party, the People’s Reform Party.
If the UPLB survey was any indication, she said, an overwhelming majority of the young voters would shade the circle next to her name in the ballot.
Santiago received 86 percent of the votes in the polls by the UPLB University Pulse Survey Research Program from November to December 2015.
Santiago was followed by Liberal Party standard bearer Manuel Roxas II, who got 6 percent of the votes, and Senator Grace Poe, who received 5 percent. The remaining 3 percent of the respondents said they had yet to choose a president for the May 9 elections.
In November last year, Santiago was chosen by 66 percent of the respondents in the mock poll of political science students.
The senator also led the surveys at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, where she got 64 percent of the votes; University of Santo Tomas (66 percent), Ateneo de Manila University (37 percent), UP Manila (59 percent), and University of Northern Philippines (36 percent).
The Commission on Elections estimates that some 20 million or 37 percent of the voters in the May polls will be 18 to 35 years old, giving the candidate wielding the youth vote enough numbers to win the elections.
Santiago said her scores in the pre-election surveys could only go up as election day neared.