Miriam Santiago tops another UPLB survey

MANILA, Philippines — Slowly becoming a favorite candidate in university circles, Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago won another university-wide election survey, this time at the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB).

Santiago was ranked as the top choice for president by students of the state university's Laguna campus in results of the Pulse Survey Research Program released last week.

Santiago got 86 percent of the votes of respondents in they survey, conducted from November to December 2015.

Liberal Party standard-bearer Manuel “Mar” Roxas followed Santiago with 6 percent of votes, followed by Sen. Grace Poe with 5 percent.

The remaining 3 percent of respondents said they were undecided on who to vote for president on the May 9 election day.

This is not the first time Santiago emerged as the presidential choice in UPLB. She was also chosen by 66 percent of respondents in the mock polls conducted by political science students in November last year.

Santiago also led the campus surveys at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, where she got 64 percent, University of Santo Tomas with 66 percent, Ateneo de Manila University with 37 percent, University of the Philippines Manila with 59 percent, and University of Northern Philippines with 36 percent.

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Santiago, who consistently tops campus presidential preference surveys, welcomed the results of the recent survey.

 “When a candidate leads a survey, it means that she is doing something right in her campaign. But when a candidate is almost unrivaled in a survey, that means voters see something wrong in the other choices,” Santiago said.

 “Campus surveys are the pulse of the youth vote, a decisive factor in the presidential elections. If the UPLB survey is any indication, an overwhelming majority of youth voters will shade the circle next to my name in the ballot,” she added.

Santiago is confident her pre-election survey scores can only go up as the election day nears being the only candidate who has yet to release campaign advertisements. She said her team will start campaigning from February 9 to May 7.