by Helen Flores (The Philippine Star)
http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=556549&publicationSubCategoryId=63 MANILA, Philippines - If the elections were held last month, either Liberal Party’s (LP) Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III or his closest rival Nacionalista Party’s (NP) Sen. Manuel Villar would win the presidency, a latest survey by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) revealed yesterday.
Aquino and Villar were “statistically tied” at first place in the SWS presidential survey conducted from Feb. 24 to 28.
The survey, commissioned by BusinessWorld, showed that Aquino continued to set the pace with 36 percent, closely followed by Villar with 34 percent.
Applying the margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points, Aquino’s rating may be the same as Villar’s, the SWS said.
The survey used face-to-face interviews of 2,100 registered voters nationwide.
Aquino’s rating dropped in four geographical areas: seven points in the balance of Luzon, six in Mindanao, five in the Visayas, and three in Metro Manila.
Villar, meanwhile, lost six percentage points in Metro Manila, two in balance Luzon, and one in Mindanao, but rose by five points in the Visayas.
By area, the SWS said Aquino remained ahead in Metro Manila, the Visayas, and Mindanao, while Villar was leading in balance Luzon.
SWS said their lost votes appear to have gone to the third- and fourth-ranked candidates: former President Joseph Estrada of the Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP), whose score improved by two points to 15 percent, and administration bet Gilbert Teodoro of the Lakas-Kampi-CMD, who also gained two points to six percent.
Estrada’s score was up by six points in Metro Manila, three in Mindanao, and one in the rest of Luzon. He, however, lost two points in the Visayas.
Teodoro, meanwhile, had a three-point increase each in balance Luzon and Mindanao, and by one in the Visayas, while dropping by only one point in Metro Manila.
SWS said vote percentages for the rest of the presidential candidates did not change significantly from the previous poll done from Jan. 21 to 24.
Evangelist Eddie Villanueva of Bangon Pilipinas (BP) was in fifth place with three percent, followed by Bagumbayan’s Sen. Richard Gordon whose rating stayed at two percent.
Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) candidate Vetellano Acosta, recently disqualified by the Commission on Elections (Comelec), received 0.4 percent.
Environmentalist Nicanor Perlas got 0.2 percent while Ang Kapatiran bet John Carlos de Los Reyes and Sen. Jamby Madrigal received 0.1 percent each.
By class, Aquino was said to be ahead among the masa or class D, from 45 percent to 38 percent.
Villar, on the other hand, was the top pick for classes ABC - 33 percent from 40 percent - and E - two points down to 34 percent.
“The key change from the Jan. 21-24 survey in class ABC was that both Villar and Aquino lost seven points, while Estrada gained four points and Teodoro gained two points,” the SWS said.
Among the masa, Aquino lost seven points while Villar stayed steady: the gap thus narrowed to four points.
In class E, Aquino lost six points while Villar lost two. Teodoro gained three and Estrada two. The class E lead thus shifted to Villar, the SWS said.
SWS said it used a new system in the latest poll: instead of responding orally after being asked to pick from the list of candidates approved by the Comelec, respondents were now provided “ballots” which they had to mark in private and then deposit in a container brought by the interviewer.
All lists on the ballot were in alphabetical order and included nicknames as practiced by the Comelec on Election Day.
The question asked was: “Kung ang eleksyon ay gaganapin ngayon, sino ang pinakamalamang ninyong iboboto bilang Presidente, Bise-Presidente, at mga Senador ng Pilipinas. Narito ang listahan ng mga kandidato. Paki-shade o itiman po ang naa-angkop na oval katabi ng pangalan ng taong pina-kamalamang ninyong iboboto (If the elections were held today, whom would you most likely vote for as President, Vice-President, and Senators of the Philippines. Here is a list of candidates. Please shade the oval beside the name of the persons you would most likely vote for).”
The results of the SWS survey contrast with a Feb. 21 to 25 Pulse Asia survey released last Friday which showed Aquino pulled away from Villar.
That survey showed Aquino topping the presidential race with 36 percent against Villar’s 29 percent.
Mar still ahead
In the vice presidential race, LP’s Sen. Mar Roxas kept a big lead over his rivals despite a four-point plunge in his ratings.
Roxas continued to top the list with a score of 45 percent against NP’s Sen. Loren Legarda who has 28 percent.
PMP’s Jejomar Binay obtained 17 percent, while Bagumbayan’s Bayani Fernando received three percent of votes.
Eduardo Manzano of Lakas got two percent, followed by KBL’s Jay Sonza who received one percent.
BP’s Perfecto Yasay and Ang Kapatiran’s Dominador Chipeco Jr.’s scores remained unchanged at 0.4 percent.
Neck and neck
The LP said the SWS survey clearly showed that Aquino already has solid support and would just have to work harder to widen his lead over Villar.
LP campaign manager Florencio Abad said they were grateful that the people kept their trust in Aquino despite his closest rival’s excessive spending on television advertisements that has obviously breached the limit set by Comelec, as well Villar’s well-funded propaganda machine.
“The opposing camp has practically thrown everything against Noynoy Aquino but his supporters remain undaunted – what can Villar do next?” Abad asked.
“What this survey tells us is that our message is holding and we must continue delivering that to places like the Samar islands and Northern Luzon, where we see greater opportunities recruiting more supporters. For this purpose, the Aquino campaign intends to aggressively expand its volunteer base of 200,000 in these places,” he said.
Although the race has become tighter, Abad said the party remains confident that their “message of change and freedom from corruption will hold sway in the end, and that the voters will make the right decision come the May elections.”
The NP, on the other hand, believes that it is still anybody’s ballgame and that the latest survey shows that Villar’s campaign strategy is working just fine.
Speaking with reporters in Davao where he attended the presidential forum hosted by pastor Apollo Quiboloy of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ yesterday, Villar said that an average of all the surveys that came out for the month showed him in a statistical tie with Aquino.
Villar was unfazed when Pulse Asia came out with its February survey last week, which saw Aquino’s lead over him widen to seven points.
At the time, Villar was confident that subsequent surveys would show a more accurate picture of how the candidates were performing.
“We consider and accept all of the surveys. I am happy with the two surveys (Manila Standard Today and Pulse Asia) which showed that we were tied,” Villar said.
“I would not say that it is the winning strategy because we have not won. What I can say is that so far, we are happy. What we have to do now is a fine-tuning of our campaign strategy. There is no reason for us to change strategy. We are starting to gel together as a group and we will continue to improve,” he added.
Villar said he expects the battle to become more intense in the coming days, particularly when the local campaign starts on March 26, especially now that he was assured support by former Lakas stalwarts Davao del Sur Gov. Douglas Cagas and Surigao del Norte Gov. Robert “Ace” Barbers.
Villar described this phenomenon as “ponkan” politics, when green ponkans will eventually become orange.
Green is the campaign color of Lakas’ Teodoro.
Presidency is not for the moneyed
Villar’s good showing in the survey didn’t sit well with LP Sen. Francis Pangilinan, who said that the 2010 presidential race will go not to the first on track or to the moneyed but to the pure of heart.
“Despite being the first candidate to run in the presidential derby, and an unprecedented ad buy of over one billion pesos since November of last year, Sen. Villar continues to fall short of his ultimate objective – that of overtaking Sen. Noynoy,” he said.
“The numbers themselves are rather inconsistent; in one survey Sen. Noy’s numbers in Mindanao are double that of Sen. Villar’s; in another, Sen. Noy’s lead in the same island is only three points. We are, however, happy to see that our people have not allowed themselves to be swayed by the deluge of Villar ads on TV,” Pangilinan added.
Villar, according to figures from AGB Nielsen, has spent over P120 million from Feb. 9 to March 2 on TV advertisements alone.
The figure puts Villar’s total expenditures on political as from Nov. 1 last year to March 2 this year at over P1.3 billion - an amount almost equal to the total TV ad expenditures of four of his closest rivals.
Estrada ranked second with P88 million, followed by Aquino with P87 million, Gordon with P67.3 million, and Teodoro with P60.4 million worth of TV commercials since the start of the campaign period.
If spending from Nov. 1 last year would be taken into account, Teodoro would rank second as he has spent almost half a billion pesos (P472,810,675) on TV ads to March 2 this year.
Gordon: Be wary of paid surveys
Meanwhile, Sen. Gordon is delighted at having beaten his rivals in campus mock polls despite lagging behind in surveys.
In a mock election held last week, Gordon was picked by students from the University of the Philippines’ College of Mass Communication (CMC) to be the next president of the Philippines.
“I’m happy that I was No. 1 in UP. It’s not a survey. It’s a mock election. It’s a real election. What happened is that Noynoy lagged and Gibo came next to me. That’s when you see that the people are thinking. That is what we need to do,” he said.
Results of the mock voting conducted by the CMC’s Department of Journalism showed Gordon garnering 139 votes, representing 37.57 percent of the 370 enrolled students of the CMC who participated in the mock presidential polls.
Teodoro came in second with 107 votes, while Aquino was third with 48 votes. Villar placed fourth with 37.
Gordon added that he also topped the mock polls held at Lyceum University last January, where he got 59 votes or about 40 percent of students who attended the Lyceum Presidential Forum.
Because of this, Gordon advised the public to be wary of paid surveys as they often cause the conditioning of the minds of the electorate and, eventually, steal the people’s right to choose the best and most capable candidate.
“We have to be wary of these paid surveys. We do not even know if all our names are there, who commissioned the survey, what was the methodology and what were the questions asked. We must not let these surveys take away our right to choose who among the candidates is the most capable to be the next president,” Gordon said.
He stressed that instead of believing in the surveys, the voting public should instead consider the track record of the presidential bet.
“We have to put in mind that it is the record of service, the track record, and not the surveys, that matter in choosing the next leaders of our country,” he said. – Marvin Sy, Aurea Calica, Christina Mendez, Mike Frialde
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