Lakas-Kampi-CMD presidential bet Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro Jr. topped the Ateneo de Manila University’s mock election last December, outpolling the favored Ateneo alumnus — Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino.
Teodoro’s campaign spokesman, lawyer Mike Toledo, quickly observed that the “development shows that there is now a bandwagon among youth voters for Gibo Teodoro.”
The Ateneo poll confirmed Teodoro’s surge in college and university campuses nationwide, firming up a trend in which he is the presidential candidate most favored by students to lead the country in the next six years, Toledo said.
The Jesuit-run university’s school organ, “The Guidon,” bannered the story “Gibo triumphs in mock polls” as it explained that Teodoro beat Aquino in Blue Votes for Ateneans conducted by the Sanggunian and Ateneo Commission on Elections.
Teodoro received 598 votes to Aquino’s 589 in the poll of 1,721 voters out of the Ateneo’s roster of 7,758 students.
“This is consistent with mock polls conducted all over the country in various educational institutions in all economic class Gibo has consistently topped them all hands down. Gibo has electrified the youth. Topping the mock polls at the Ateneo, a respected educational institution, affirms this. Similar to the Obama campaign, it will be the youth that will propel Gibo to the presidency. The youth will convince their elders to vote for their future and that future is with Gibo,” Toledo stressed.
The Guidon quoted the organizers as expressing surprise over the result since many expected Aquino to beat Teodoro who went to the rival De la Salle University and the University of the Philippines law school.
Sanggunian secretary-general and Blue Vote overseer Kacci Morales said the results surprised her, while Blue Vote co-project head and course representative Robert Lance Chua found the surprise to be pleasant since he is rooting for Teodoro.
“Knowing Ateneans, they support Aquino because of his parents and the legacy that they brought,” he said.
Chua said he believed in Gibo’s stand despite his association with the Arroyo administration.
“Even if I argue in my head that the winner should’ve been Noynoy... at the end of the day, the results would show that Gibo Teodoro won, possibly with the detail that he won by nine votes,” Morales said.
Teodoro, the youngest among the frontrunners in the May polls at 45, has been consolidating his lead in the younger crowd which has made him the winner in the mock elections in colleges and universities.
Ateneo and the school organ have a long history with the Aquinos, particularly Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr., who wrote in the school paper under the late Max Soliven.
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