How truthful are surveys conducted
Before anything else, let us welcome to Cebu City, Mr. Mike Storkey, International President-elect, of the Toastmasters International. He is here in our city as guest of honor of the District Convention of the Toastmasters District 75, the Philippine toastmasters. Whenever we have the chance to meet him, let us let him savor the warmth of the Filipino brand of friendship and the special genre of Cebuano hospitality.
Having spread the red carpet to our esteemed visitor, let me go back to my off tangent nature. There had been several surveys conducted by national pollsters these past few months to see how the campaigns of candidates for president impacted on the preliminary choices of our voters. Like many, we have kept faith in the impartiality of the methodology of their processes simply because we never had peeked into their operations. Good faith has two operative words. Naturally, because we believed in their supposed objective directions and their imagined scientific procedures, we have also accepted their analysis of the situations as, for the lack of a better term, logical and probable.
I waited for the results of the last two surveys with anticipated breath especially on two contenders for Malacañang, namely Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and former Secretary Manuel "Mar" Roxas. At the back of my mind, there should be revealing changes in the expression of preferences of our electorates brought about by a plethora, perhaps, helluva would be the right word, of the candidates declarations.
Noting that Mayor Duterte, literally started at the bottom the heap and then, quite lately, sprinted to front, I thought that the revelations of his dangerous personality done by no one else but by his own utterly unpresidential (is there such a term?) statements, would impair his surge. Summary executions, as an issue, was just too huge to ignore. Why should there be a groundswell for a candidate who, if late reports were true, acknowledged responsibility of some kind for the death of about 1,700 individuals, among them three well respected journalists and broadcasters? The presidency, in my description, is the highest position in the country and the electorate should give it to one whose demeanor, pronouncements and thoughts, during the campaign, should indicate dignity, decency and finesse and above all, adherence to due process of law. I thus, expected his ratings to fall.
If that should happen, I surmised that the beneficiary of Duterte's falter would either be Vice President Jejomar Binay or Roxas. In the case of Binay, the attack on his alleged corrupt ways already passed its prime. The corruption issues that served as the ram battering the Makati Building II edifice of Binay has already become a spent force. The candidate has seemingly survived it and thus his ratings could not fall any lower. Binay's cause should have reinvented with the controversy surrounding the weird statements of Duterte, spiraling.
I expected that the major portion of those who should turn U on the Duterte highway and distance from his rambling, would favor Roxas. After all, this former secretary remains focused in his decent campaign ways and consistent in his statesmanship.
But we must have noticed that the survey ratings of Roxas have remained nailed at 18 percent. This percentage was his in the first few surveys months ago. While Binay, paced within the 22 to 30% curve, and Duterte as well as Poe-Llamanzares continued to change their points, within the range of 12 to 30+, the constant 18 percent of Roxas has been and is remarkable.
Let me ask, how come Roxas' figure has not moved at all? If Duterte surged to unprecedented levels, and Poe-Llamanzres moved past Roxas, should not the number of those who favored Roxas gone down correspondingly? But, why has Roxas number stuck at 18 percent.
I expect that the storm against Duterte called "rape joke" would take its toll on the Davao mayor's mystique. The survey results in the next few days should reveal it. Our people's outrage against the display of Duterte's sick treatment of an emotional issue, should diminish the support for the Mindanao bet and such a drastic change of heart should favor Roxas. If Mar's ratings still remain at 18 percent by then, there should be something undesirable in the way the surveys are being done.
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