http://www.tribune.net.ph/commentary/20100125com1.html
Amusing is the right word to describe two presidential canditates arguing over their survey numbers, and how they continue to spin them to their advantage.
The camp of Nacionalista Party top bet Manny Villar comes out with a Villar commissioned survey, alongside a press release saying that the survey numbers, separating him from Liberal Party’s top bet Noynoy Aquino, are now closer and that Villar is fast-catching up with Aquino in the surveys.
And there is of course that PR that says Villar has not lost momentum, as the December survey shows.
This was of course one way for the Villar camp to douse speculations as well as analyses that the Senate committee of the whole (Scow) report finding Villar guilty of unethical conduct and using his position to benefit him and his properties has had a negative impact on him.
The problem with this claim is that the survey was conducted before the Scow report surfaced. Yet another amusing reaction came from the Aquino camp, with Mar Roxas, who has taken the role of Noynoy’s defender — as apparently, Noynoy does not know how to defend himself — saying it does not matter if Villar has inched up with a 10 percentage point increase. Roxas argued that whether a 10 percent, five percent or even one percent, Noynoy still leads the race.
Gee, one would think that these presidential bets take these surveys as gospel truth and take these results are taken as the official ballot results out in May 2010.
Yet why should they, when a lot of these surveys have shown that they can be so error-prone?
A good example would be the Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey on the so-called exit polls (which aren’t exit polls really, since these are not taken immediately after the respondents leave the precincts and long after they have voted — if they had voted at all, plus the fact that the survey respondents were pre-selected), of Metro Manila voters in the 2004 presidential polls, where it was claimed that Gloria Arroyo won the vote in Metro Manila.
The official count showed that she lost in all the precincts in Metro Manila, save for Villar’s Las Piñas.
Similarly, what purpose does a survey serve, covering only certain areas where those who commissioned the survey believed their bet is strong, if not for mind-conditioning purposes?
Worse is that such surveys, which comes off with 60 percent for that candidate (in this case, Noynoy Aquino) have the respondents name three of their preferred choices for the top post?
In much the same vein, surveys, such as the latest Villar commissioned one done by SWS, are pretty dumb, in the sense that the survey comes up with too many scenarios, such as a one on one scenario, which pitted Villar against Noynoy, or five presidential candidates, with one or two names dropped from the list, when such scenarios are not going to come about, since there are as of the last count, 10 presidential candidates. And if some do drop out of the race, it stands to reason that it won’t be at that particular time when the surveys were conducted.
There are surveys and there are surveys, and even in the case of supposedly “independent” surveys, it is much too evident that survey numbers are being massaged too often, since some of these survey outfits are clearly partisan.
In the end, however, it is they who destroy themselves.
As for those two presidential bets fighting over survey numbers, it is time for them to grow up and start answering the issues leveled against them, instead of fighting over survey figures.
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