Climate change in the 2010 election race Page 1 of 3

Column for Philippine Daily Inquirer PDI 09-41, 10-15-09 [for publication on 10-17-2009]

Climate change in the 2010 election race

Mahar Mangahas

The tremendous national grief at the passage of former President and democracy icon Corazon Aquino was obviously responsible for the sudden surge of her son Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III into the lead in the 2010 presidential race.

The Osmeña poll. Survey-wise, this surge first appeared in the September 5-6 SWS poll of the so-called “Lingayen-Lucena corridor” commissioned by Sergio Osmeña III, released by him, and confirmed on the SWS website on September 15. This corridor, extending from Metro Manila to the north into Central Luzon and up to Pangasinan, and to the south into Southern Tagalog provinces on Luzon island, is where presidential races have traditionally been won, with the notable exception of the 2004 election.

In the Lingayen-Lucena corridor, former Senator Osmeña’s poll found Noynoy Aquino getting 50 percent of the intended vote, if pitted specifically against Manny Villar (14 percent), Joseph Estrada (13 percent), Francis Escudero (12 percent), and Noli de Castro (7 percent). The sample size of 1,200 implies a 3 percent error margin for the specific area covered.

SWS’s own tracking system. On its own account (i.e., without external sponsorship), and for public disclosure regardless of findings, since September 2007 SWS has used its regular quarterly national surveys to ask respondents to name who (plural, as in sinu-sino) are the best leaders to succeed President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo after the end of her term in May 2010. Respondents are told they may give up to three names; this widens the scope for identifying potentially viable candidates.

The wording of this question has been the same every time it has been used. This is critical to its value as a tracking device. It has never presented a list of candidates to prompt respondents. It is asked ahead of all questions which offer hypothetical lists of candidates that might thereby stick in the respondents’ minds and discriminate against any candidate not listed.

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By not using any list of candidates, the question is all-inclusive. It permits naming those like Chief Justice Reynato Puno and Senator Panfilo Lacson who have clearly renounced any interest in the presidency. Indeed, even though it states that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is ineligible to run for president again, a few respondents still name her as one of the best successors to herself. Most of all, I wish to emphasize that the question never excluded Noynoy Aquino as a potential president; thus it cannot be said that SWS “decided to include Noynoy’s name for the first time.”

New results. Last Wednesday, through its media partner BusinessWorld, SWS released the finding of its September 18-21, 2009 national survey that 60 percent named Noynoy Aquino as a best successor, suddenly making him the most popular candidate. After being off the people’s radar in nine polls since 2007, Noynoy’s standing took off from virtually zero to sixty sometime between June 19-22 and September 18-21. This enormous movement, amounting to a climate change in the election race, was undoubtedly triggered by the death of the beloved Cory Aquino on August 1st.

The second most popular was Manny Villar, who was cited by 37 percent. Then come Joseph Estrada (18 percent), Francis Escudero (15), Mar Roxas (12), Noli de Castro (8), Loren Legarda (5), Gilberto Teodoro (4), Panfilo Lacson (2), Jejomar Binay (2), Bayani Fernando (1), Eddie Villanueva (1) and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (0.5). The September 2009 sample size of 1,800 implies a 2.3 percent error margin for national figures.

The fact that the above numbers, plus a host of tiny fractions, add up to about 170 percentage points implies that the average number of names given in the new survey was about 1.7 per respondent. If everyone gave three names each, then the percentages would total 300. But, in fact, most people give only one or two names, with past averages being 1.4 or 1.5.

Now, what else changed between the last two SWS national surveys? Aside from Noynoy, only Villar (up 4 points) and Teodoro (up 3 points) had higher scores than in June 2009, or a combined increase of 7 points. Seven others had lower scores than before, including de Castro (down 11 points), Legarda (down 10), Roxas (down 8), Estrada (down 7), Escudero (down 5), Lacson (down 5), and Binay (down 2), or a combined drop of 48 points.

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The net drop of 41 (from 48 minus 7) points among these nine aspirants means that about two-thirds of Noynoy’s new 60 points came at the expense of others, and one-third came from people adding him to those they name as worthy presidential successors.

Point spreads. I should point out that the “point-spreads” between the names are not the same as voting margins, since the SWS question in effect gives respondents up to three votes for three candidates. (The way to arrive at a voting margin through a survey is to first specify a hypothetical list of candidates, and then ask the respondents to choose one of them to vote for. SWS will do this on its own account, for public disclosure, once the filing of candidacies is completed.) Nonetheless these point-spreads are reasonable indicators of the relative strengths of the candidates at the reference points in time.

Clearly, Noynoy Aquino has newly acquired a substantial lead in the presidential race, as of September 2009; but the race is still long. I think that Ramon Magsaysay’s 69-31 point win over Elpidio Quirino in 1953, the most lopsided presidential race in postwar history, is still a safe record.

Once one sees that a ‘climate-change’ can happen in an election race, then one should realize that it can happen again.

Contact SWS: www.sws.org.ph or [email protected].

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M. Mangahas, Social Climate, PDI 09-41 Oct 17 Climate change in the 2010 election race