Column: The Filipino as cross-voter

My first column for Rappler. I try to draw attention to a practice in Philippine elections that isn’t often discussed, and which complicates the picture created by increased political polarization. Published on October 6, 2021.

The polarized nature of much of public discourse these days suggests that political alignments are self-contained, separated from one another in colored silos: red, yellow, orange, white. But in fact the practice of cross-voting, understood not strictly but analogically, is common—so common that millions of voters do it.

Cross-voting is when a member of one party votes for another party. Very few Filipino voters identify as party members, so the borrowed concept is applicable to this common practice only by analogy. Take a look, for instance, at the highlights of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) 2016 exit poll.

“The voters of 2016 ignored the pairings of the candidates even more than in earlier elections,” SWS’s Mahar Mangahas wrote soon after the elections. “As of 2 am on May 10, when the 2016 exit poll sample had reached 62,485 voters from 785 of the 802 VCs [voting centers], the [Rodrigo] Duterte vote percentage had reached 40 points, for a 16-point lead over [Mar] Roxas. Of his 40 points, only 13 came from voters of his cocandidate [Allan Peter] Cayetano; the bulk of 18 came from [Bongbong] Marcos voters, and another 6 were from [Leni] Robredo voters.”

In other words, some 15% of Duterte’s 16.6 million voters voted for Robredo as vice president. That’s almost 2.5 million votes. An astounding number, and given the trolling, turmoil, and tragedy that have overcome public discourse the last five years, somewhat difficult to wrap our heads around.

Column: How to put surveys to good use

Published on August 17, 2021.

We need to be smart about surveys. I’ve heard people who work in marketing say they don’t believe in surveys because in all their life they’ve never been part of a survey’s random sample. This is basic innumeracy (how many possible sets of 1,800 respondents are there in a population of 110 million?) compounded by demographic ignorance (a marketing executive likely belongs to a sliver of the AB “class,” a random sample of which must be proportional to the actual size of that demographic class).

To be clear: Surveys are not determinative—at least until the second survey round of the 90-day campaign period. That means that it will be the survey cycle about four or five weeks into the national campaign period where we may find public opinion consolidating.

Column: Death and Duterte

Published on October 10, 2017.

The drop in President Duterte’s satisfaction ratings was almost across the board — except in Mindanao, and in the ABC socioeconomic demographic. I must emphasize one fact: Despite the falling numbers, the President continues to enjoy majority approval for his performance, and also across the board. All the same, the drop in his ratings is substantial and a cause for worry in Malacañang as well as for his political allies in the Senate and the House.

That Mr. Duterte’s approval numbers in Mindanao are statistically unchanged, at 82 percent, is no surprise; he is the first president from Mindanao and won overwhelming support from Mindanaons in the 2016 election. But why was there an increase in his satisfaction rating in the ABC classes, in the Social Weather Stations survey, from 65 percent in June to 70 in September? The same survey found that in class D his rating dropped by 10 points from 78 percent to 68, and in class E his rating plunged by 19 points, from 80 percent to 61.

Column: Roxas’ path to victory

Published on August 4, 2015.

CAN MAR Roxas win? The objective answer is yes. Will he? The most realistic answer is: It’s too early to tell.

I find myself belaboring these obvious points, because the theory—or the narrative, if you will—that Roxas is a sure loser is making the rounds again. (For a couple of days after President Aquino endorsed Roxas as the Liberal Party candidate for president in the 2016 elections, the news and social media environment for Roxas turned decidedly favorable. Call it the endorsement bump.) But some of the same people who thrill to the possibility of a Miriam Defensor Santiago presidential run (which would be her third), or declare confidently that Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has the right strategy and enough money to lay claim to the presidency, sweepingly discount Roxas’ chances because of his “low” ratings. But in the June 2015 Social Weather Stations survey, only 4 percent of the respondents saw Santiago as one of the three best leaders to succeed President Aquino, while only 3 percent listed Marcos. About a fifth of the respondents, or 21 percent, included Roxas in their list.

Column: Is the Philippine flag ‘unconstitutional’?

Published on May 26, 2015.

THE RESISTANCE to the Bangsamoro Basic Law has shifted to the battleground of constitutionality. We still hear the occasional demand for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to show its sincerity as a partner in the peace process by making amends for the Mamasapano incident—but now that congressional committees have started voting on the controversial measure, the question of MILF sincerity is no longer a determining or even perhaps an influential factor.

Even supporters of the bill recognize the shift in the debate; Rep. Rufus Rodriguez’s strategy to win the bill’s passage at his committee level, for instance, was premised and pushed (and publicized) on the perceived need to align key provisions in the BBL with the Constitution.

We can all agree on one principal reason for the change: It is an attempt to base the debate on firmer ground, on the solid logic of constitutional law rather than the volatile emotionalism of post-Mamasapano blame-mongering.

Column: Why Ninoy?

Published on November 25, 2014.

Let me begin with a basic question: Is Ninoy Aquino a role model of good governance? Millions of Filipinos see him as a modern-day martyr and (as a 2011 Social Weather Stations survey reminded us) a genuine hero. But is he the sort of political figure who represents the ideal that a school of government should aspire to form, to graduate?

When the Ateneo School of Government was renamed last August after Ninoy and his wife, the late ex-president Corazon Aquino, the reaction, or at least the response I was able to monitor, was generally positive. This reading may have been a result of the filter bubbles I am wittingly or unwittingly encased in, but as far as the Aquinos are concerned (in August 2009, for instance, I wrote a series of four columns on the legacy of this influential family), I think my opinion closely tracks that of a national majority.

As we prepare to mark Ninoy’s 82nd birth anniversary (it is to be held later this week), we can revisit the original question, and perhaps rephrase it: Was Ninoy a martyr in the mold of a Thomas More, who was by all accounts an excellent administrator before Henry VIII turned against him, or was he more like Jose Rizal, less a political personality than a heroic one, whose violent death sealed his fate as a national hero?

Column: Breaking the survey mirror

Published on May 14, 2013.

I must disagree with the esteemed Randy David, when in his May 9 column he lumped election surveys together with “political dynasties, religious meddling in politics, [and] corporate financing of electoral campaigns” as obstacles to modernity.

By that measure, every single modern polity that the Philippines can possibly look to as template is premodern. In fact, given that mature democracies use election surveys even more heavily than the Philippines does, by Randy’s own criteria they must be even more backward than we are.

I must quarrel especially with his reduction of the purpose of election surveys to the general notion of trending, and thus of the bandwagon. To quote the passage in full: “Interestingly, theorists of modernity do not fret over the fact that premodern societies do not measure up to these standards. They believe that societal evolution eventually favors the emergence of autonomous political systems. In short, whether or not there’s an explicit law banning them, political dynasties, religious meddling in politics, corporate financing of electoral campaigns, and the use of surveys to sway voters are bound to become less important, or even obsolete, as society becomes modern.”

Column: Trillanes, Honasan most vulnerable now?

A reading that proved to be erroneous, at least in terms of actual election results. Published on April 23, 2013.

The results of the April 13-15 Social Weather Stations survey are in, and for the first time two nonreelectionist candidates for the Senate have broken into the Top 4. The number of survey respondents who said they would vote for Nancy Binay and Cynthia Villar rose from 47 percent in March to 49 percent in April, enough for them to tie for joint 3rd-4th place.

But I would guess that the real story from the April results, from the point of view of the campaigns themselves, is the sharp declines in voter support for the ex-soldiers running for reelection, Antonio Trillanes IV and Gringo Honasan.

(Caveat emptor: As I have done in previous columns, I equate the voter preference of the respondents participating in these surveys with voter support, and assume that these numbers will translate, more or less directly, into actual votes. More qualifications need to be made, but that is the gist of it.)

Column: Will Risa or Dick make it? Survey says …

I missed my deadline for April 2, just as the campaigns for the 2013 midterm elections were heating up; I tried to make up for it with seven election-related columns in the next several weeks. This one, published on April 9, 2013, was the first.

Supporters of Risa Hontiveros were the first to point this out to me. She was doing worse at this stage of the campaign in 2010, they said, and yet she still came tantalizingly close to winning then.

Let’s take a look at the SWS surveys from three years ago. In the January 2010 poll, she came in at 22-23, well outside the prospective winners’ circle. In February 2010, she improved to 18-20, but then lost ground in March 2010, falling to 22-24. (She would come back strongly in the succeeding months, improving to 16-18 in April and to 14-15 in the May 2010 survey, before finally landing, after the votes were counted, in 13th place.)

Her numbers in 2013 are healthier. In the January 2013 poll, she came in at 18-19. She consolidated her position in both the February and March surveys, claiming solo 18th place. This is, of course, still six steps removed from a seat in the Senate. But the campaign implications are clear: She is starting from a higher base, and if she can muster the same momentum she put to good use in 2010, especially in the second half of a 90-day campaign, she just might break into the circle of 12.

An election lesson plan

My apologies for cross-posting from Inquirer Current, but that blog is taking forever to load today. Besides, the topic — Are Filipinos intelligent voters? — fits in nicely with this blog’s particular obsessions.

In Current, the post is entitled “Learning from Loren.”

The other day, I was asked yet another question about intelligent electorates. Do Filipinos vote for the most popular, even if the most popular are not necessarily the most qualified? Or (to use the terms the interviewers used): Is the Filipino “audience” intelligent? How about the Filipino “electorate”?

I gave a qualified answer, of course, making a distinction between the way we vote for the presidency and the way we vote for the Senate. I use that same distinction in my column of February 10, where I propose that our next president, come May 2010, can only be either of the following: Kabayan, Loren, Manny Villar, Chiz, Ping, and Mar. (Is the fact that Manny Villar does not have a ready one-word handle boon or bane?)

But it is possible, even when we only have a single vote to cast rather than the 12 we can use for the Senate, to send clear signals to the candidates, a point I raised in passing in my column of February 3.

Consider the case of Loren Legarda. The 1998 Senate topnotcher, she did not do well in the voters’ preferences surveys conducted by SWS in the run-up to the 2004 vote.

In the December 2002 survey, for example, Raul Roco and FPJ topped the list, with Kabayan and GMA in striking distance. Loren, however, had a measly dieter’s slice of the pie.

In that same survey, however, Legarda did quite well in the vice-presidential list. She placed second to Kabayan (who had just topped the Senate race a year and a half before, in 2001).

As it turns out (here is an SWS news release for its November 2003 survey, about a year after the first poll), Legarda’s vice-presidential qualities (to coin a phrase) impressed more and more Filipinos. By November 2003, the race between De Castro and Legarda had become a real contest.

My point: In 2004, voters were discriminating enough to make a distinction between Legarda as president and Legarda as vice-president. (In contrast, voters were equally happy to say they would vote for Noli de Castro either as president or as vice-president — at least until FPJ threw his hat into the ring.) I see that distinction-making as a sign that, in fact, and by and large, voters in the aggregate know what they want.

Here, then, is intelligence, of a sort, at work.