The real survey

As expected, the Pulse Asia Inc. officially released yesterday its quarterly “Ulat ng Bayan” national survey on the performance ratings of government officials led by President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III. For the third quarter, approval rating of President Aquino remained at 54% while his trust rating was at 49%, just a percentage point off compared to the previous quarter.

Vice President Jejomar Binay suffered the biggest declines in both approval and trust ratings after more than a year of being pilloried at the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee over alleged corruption while he was mayor of the city of Makati.

The survey was taken from Sept. 8 to 14, This was a regular “Ulat ng Bayan” survey that Pulse Asia conducts using face-to-face interviews. The survey coincided with the period after Binay resigned from the Cabinet and started attacking the Aquino administration.

Meanwhile, efforts to question Senator Grace Poe’s Filipino citizenship have had little or no effect on her pace-setting numbers in the third quarter survey results of both the Social Weather Stations (SWS) and Pulse Asia. In fact, Poe has even maintained her top spot after she first overtook and dislodged Binay from his early front-running spot in voters’ preference in the pre-election opinion polls of the SWS and Pulse Asia during the previous quarters.

Validating this observation, Pulse Asia research director Ana Maria Tabunda acknowledged the latest survey results showing three percentage points dip in Poe’s rating were “insignificant” to cause concern or for her camp to panic.

In the Pulse Asia survey commissioned by ABS-CBN and conducted from Aug. 27 to Sept. 3, Poe continued to hold sway among the presidential contenders. She got 27%. Vice President Binay came in second, with 21%; and administration bet, ex-Interior Secretary Mar Roxas II coming in third place, with 18%.

In the latest poll results released by SWS, Poe was also ahead with 26%; Binay running second at 24%; and Roxas, third at 20%. The two pollsters noted Roxas’ surge in the surveys can be attributed to President Aquino’s endorsement of Roxas and not primarily because voters preferred his former Cabinet member as a presidential candidate.

Binay, on the other hand, continues to reel from graft and corruption accusations that hound him after repeatedly refusing invitations at the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee to clear his name.

The dip in Poe’s numbers may have been brought about by defeated senatorial candidate Rizalino David’s filing of a disqualification case against her before the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET). Despite the high media coverage on this controversial legal tussle, it apparently had little effect on Poe’s presidential bid.

Appearing as guest in our Kapihan sa Manila Bay last week, Tabunda admitted these pre-polls surveys on candidates are largely influenced by media play during the period the survey is conducted. Tabunda pointed to television as the single biggest influential media that could dictate the shape of survey results. This includes not only those aired on TV as news reports but also ads and info-mercials of certain politicians.

This is why many of these obviously moneyed candidates have started airing their respective TV info-mercials way ahead of the campaign period for the May 2016 election. Since they are not yet candidates, they have been getting away with it.

Poe’s camp, however, claims they have yet to launch a substantial advertising campaign. The senator herself has declared she would not tolerate mudslinging nor engage in dirty politics just to gain extra mileage in media.

It is rather un-statesmanlike to hear Vice President Binay to publicly refer to Poe as “the American girl” in obvious digs at her citizenship woes.

If there was anything new that the survey results bared, it was the high level of trust from Filipinos that not only she enjoyed but also that of her vice presidential running mate Sen. Chiz Escudero. If anything, the surveys only showed how prepared Poe came into the presidential race as ably supported by a bankable running mate in Escudero.

While Poe was shown leading in the presidential derby, the same Pulse Asia survey noted she, too, was ahead in the vice presidential race and was leading Escudero by a slim margin.

This shows, more than anything else, that there is true trust and confidence in the Poe-Escudero tandem. Filipinos consider them as reliable public servants who could serve not only in the top position of the government but as vice president as well.

As such, experts noted that the Poe-Escudero tandem was now being considered by a growing number of voters as a “package deal,” hopefully not just for corruption-free governance but more reliable public service.

On the other hand, delays being experienced by Binay and Roxas in finding respective running mates only serve to underscore the public perception that whoever the two presidentiables pick would just result in a “marriage of convenience,” which would more likely than not, create ugly political squabbles in the future.

Filipino voters can see through this. And they don’t want to see another six years where the vice president would just be like a spare tire who – more often than not, ends up feuding with the President.

More teamwork, less politicking. Filipino voters have grown weary of a one-man show in Malacañang and now appear to prefer an administration that runs smoothly with a lot less bickering.

Parallel to the “Ulat ng Bayan,” Pulse Asia disclosed they did their regular survey for the third quarter using the same sampling method but bigger representative population size of 2,400 respondents. This was unlike their previous quarterly surveys in the past that used sample size of 1,200 to 1,500 respondents.

Thus, Pulse Asia cited this particular survey has a lesser margin of error of plus-or-minus two percentage points. And at a 95 percent confidence level of reliability of data gathered. In short, the survey results can be trusted to predict with great degree of certainty the outcome of voters’ final decision.

The true and most genuine survey, however, comes through the official ballots cast on election day in May 2016.