An opposition win?

Possible, but not because some presidential candidate or candidates dropped out and their votes automatically aggregated to exceed that of President Arroyo’s. The arithmetic of vote diffusion – how people say they would vote in case their presidential first choice aborted for whatever reason – does not allow any opposition candidate to be hopeful about a lazy stroll into Malacañang. (This conclusion is indicated by survey findings from Pulse Asia’s latest pre-election survey of April 2004. This national survey of registered voters used 4800 randomly selected respondents, with each of the country’s 16 administrative regions contributing 300 respondents. Its margin of error at the national level is plus/minus 1.4 percentage points, with a confidence level set at 95 percent.)

Either alone or in combination with others, a withdrawal by any presidentiable does not generate enough support for an oppositionist to prevail over Mrs. Arroyo. For instance, even in the case of Mr. Poe, the currently most popular oppositionist, roughly two million votes more would be needed to unseat the incumbent president even if all opposition presidentiables withdrew in favor of FPJ. Vote diffusion opens no door to the presidential palace.

The main reason for this startling fact is that when a candidate withdraws from the presidential race, his/her votes tend to diffuse to several presidentiables rather than focus laserlike to a lucky alternate. A Roco withdrawal, for instance, could have four percentage points of his twelve percent voter preference diffuse towards President Arroyo, two more percentage points to Senator Lacson, yet another two percentage points to Mr. Poe and one percentage point to evangelist Villanueva; the remaining three percentage points would be represented by Roco supporters who now simply refuse to vote for anyone or who find choosing an alternative candidate quite difficult and therefore temporize.

It actually makes no difference whether it is a Poe, a Lacson, a Roco, a Villanueva or any two or three of them who choose to withdraw. No one and no combination of these presidential candidates delivers a decisive edge via simple vote diffusion to any of the remaining oppositionists.

If vote diffusion is a dead end, the now much-ballyhooed opposition unification – looking and sounding more and more like a macho search for some unholy grail – may be equally feckless. Unification unrealistically assumes what no vote diffusion probe has been able to validate. In the Philippines, no candidate vote automatically maintains its integrity as it gets to shift from one presidential candidate to another. Political unification has never worked in the fashion of grade school arithmetic where one plus one sums up to two and five plus ten invariably makes for fifteen. Particularly during elections, voter preferences for two candidates add up to much less than the simple sum of their two support levels.

Unifying the opposition may be an absolutely necessary condition for thwarting President Arroyo in the forthcoming elections. However, oppositionists who mistake it to be a sufficient condition for winning the elections deceive themselves and should not run competitive political campaigns. Much too comfort-oriented, they cannot be effective in the daunting task of managing come-from-behind electoral victories.

Since the lazy route to the presidency is no longer a credible option, the opposition requires a dynamic, willful and simultaneous pursuit of alternatives that could effect a synergistic victory over the administration’s standard bearer.

Much attention perforce must be given the arithmetic of vote diffusion and even more care might be devoted to grasping the dynamics of political unification. Both concerns now require focused and extremely quick resolution. Vote diffusion, for instance, suggests that a Roco withdrawal benefits Arroyo more and thus ought to be prevented. As for candidate unification, it is obviously criminal to allow this issue to remain unresolved yet another minute. Neither Senator Lacson nor Mr. Poe serves the opposition interest well by continuing their endless, witless and increasingly useless palavers.

However, in addition to these considerations, more intensive analysis must focus on where the unified opposition and its standard bearer could gain enough voter support to eventually overcome the administration’s presidential bet. The critical lodes of voters waiting to be mined by hardworking political workers are not difficult to spot. About 10 percent of all registered voters nationwide remain unpledged to any presidential candidate. Over three and a half million votes are therefore ready for political activation if the right mix of approaches, messages and indicative projects could be put together and addressed to those still mulling their presidential choices.

Another huge reservoir of oppositionist capital is the voters who are uncompromisingly hostile to the Arroyo administration. They comprise about 36 percent of the electorate, able to cast as many as ten and a half million votes. This critically large group has been ritualistically recognized but had not been worked on at all by the opposition. Pursuing their fragmentative politics for an overly long time, opposition presidentiables surely have engaged in nothing less than folly in failing to develop this resource as a potent political bloc.

Political unification may enable the unified opposition’s candidate to gain the support of those who may be hostile to other opposition presidentiables but are not intractably against him. His competitiveness against the administration’s own standard bearer is obviously improved by soliciting these voters’ endorsement.

The final target of an intelligent, resourceful and absolutely hardworking opposition candidate is no less than President Arroyo’s soft supporters, those who say there is a big possibility that they may still change their mind about her as their presidential choice. This group accounts for slightly over four million votes. Find them, woo them and keep them – this is the singular task of the unified opposition’s campaign team and its presidentiable.

Gaining the support of even half these identified groups ensures an oppostion victory for whoever might be the opposition’s unified standard bearer. Even for someone who might not do so well in the surveys, someone like Senator Lacson, the analysis offered here makes it possible to consider winning the 2004 presidential contest. The opposition need not abandon hope yet.

They still can make it. All they have to do is unify, focus their campaign, work truly collaboratively and be diverted by no considerations of personal turf, personal gain and personal animosity. Everything for the unified opposition, everything against a unifying administration.

They have a full week to start making this miracle possible. They have three weeks to make it come to pass.

Ample time. Ample enough for miracle workers.