THE CAMPAIGN

First-World Techniques, Third-World Setting

The X-Men: The Story of Activists-Turned-Political Consultants

With a Little Help from (U.S.) Friends

Campaigning, Filipino Style

Spinning the News

Half-Truths in Advertising

Campaigns on the High-Tech Road

Songs in the Key of Politics

PHOTO ESSAY

The Presidency as Image

ELECTION PERSPECTIVES

Elections are like Water

Between Tinsel and Trapo

The Enigma of the Popular Will

VOTER'S VOICE

First-time Voter

Regular Voter

Non-Voter

Hope and Elections in Payatas

THE LIGHTER SIDE

Making (Non)Sense of Politics

Election Lexicon

THESE DAYS, politicians are increasingly relying on surveys at different stages of an election. Early on, surveys help candidates decide to run or not by indicating to them not only people’s awareness of them but, more importantly, their “electability” or “desirability.” Mangahas cites businessman Eduardo ‘Danding’ Cojuangco Jr. and Metro Manila Development Authority chairman Bayani Fernando as examples of candidates who dropped out of the race after they didn’t do too well in the polls. Cojuangco, who ran for president in 1992, was being egged to do so again, while Fernando was mulling a run for the vice presidency in the upcoming elections.

	The surveys predicted an Estrada victory in 1998.

After the campaign rolls off, surveys continue to play an important role by pinpointing geographic and other demographic areas in which candidates are strong or weak so they could readjust their campaign strategy, including recrafting their message. Political strategist Lito Banayo recounts, for example, how the opposition got really worried when pre-election surveys in Metro Manila for the snap elections showed Corazon ‘Cory’ Aquino’s margins eroding during the campaign. Banayo, who was with the Aquino campaign at the time, recalls, “I was afraid that if the campaign were extended two more weeks and the trend continued, we might lose the elections because Metro Manila was Aquino’s bastion of strength.”

But Aquino’s handlers, led by Aurelio German and Teddy Boy Locsin, quickly retooled the campaign and came up with her famous speech before the Manila Rotary Club. Rebutting her opponent’s claim that she was a mere housewife who knew nothing, she said, “Talagang wala akong alam: wala akong alam sa pagnanakaw, wala akong alam sa pagpapatay, wala akong alam sa pangungurakot (I really know nothing: I don’t know how to rob people, I don’t know how to kill, I don’t know how to raid the country’s coffers).”

In the 1992 elections, marketing expert Anthony Abaya says Aquino constantly monitored the survey results to determine how her handpicked candidate, Fidel Ramos, was faring against LDP official bet Ramon V. Mitra. The Mitra camp, which had hired an U.S. firm to countercheck the local poll results, was dismayed to find that the then speaker of the House fared no better in their self-commissioned survey. Like the locally supervised surveys, Mitra placed only fourth.

Ramos, Abaya says, relied heavily on surveys to define the issues of his candidacy and his public projection during the campaign. The heavy emphasis on his role in the Edsa revolt, for example, exemplified in the campaign slogan “Ed sa 92” coined by Abaya, was partly due to the surveys, which showed what Abaya calls a “subliminal attachment to Edsa.”

Surveys matter just as much to campaign financiers as to candidates. “Surveys hardly affect votes, but they are going to affect contributions — pera (money), pagod (effort), volunteer work,” Mangahas said in one talk show. Money will surely not find its way to a candidate who is falling behind in the surveys.

Political analyst Antonio Gatmaitan says survey results four weeks before the elections are the most awaited by funders. “A candidate (who does not do well in the survey) may be deprived of funding,” he says. “It will prevent a candidate from pushing (through with) his plan.”

Just as valuable these days are day-of-election or exit polls. The SWS, which started conducting exit polls in 1992 for the ABS-CBN television network, surveys voters who have returned to their homes, in private, rather than outside the voting centers, in public view. The exit poll gives an even clearer picture of winners and losers than pre-election surveys. Some people feel that the publication of the exit polls minimizes cheating and puts cheaters in national focus. But Gatmaitan says the effects are “minimal.” Cheating-the result of institutional weaknesses of the electoral system-will still take place, he says, although the maximum cheating capability encompasses only five percent (about two million) of the votes. Quips Gatmaitan: “It’s a mechanically difficult undertaking.” But the Supreme Court apparently sees it differently. In a 2000 decision that struck down attempts to prohibit the publication of election surveys, the court said that “exit polls-properly conducted and publicized-can be vital tools in eliminating the evils of election-fixing and fraud.” It also declared that “the holding of exit polls and the dissemination of their results through the mass media” as being covered by the freedom of speech. “Hence,” the court said, “Comelec cannot ban them totally in the guise of promoting clean, hoenst, orderly, and credible elections.”

THE BIGGEST misconception of the public — and the biggest fear of politicians (especially those who post poor showings) — about surveys is they would have a bandwagon effect or the reverse, the underdog effect. The bandwagon effect means the results of election polls put social pressure on some of the undecided voters to vote for the side that is expected to win. That’s why some politicians have batted for the nondisclosure of survey results to the public. Pollster Pedro ‘Junie’ Laylo, however, remarks, “I haven’t encountered a definitive study on the bandwagon effect on the Philippines.”

The World Association of Public Opinion Research (Wapor) also dismisses such fears, insisting that the effects of election surveys remain minimal and can be seen as completely harmless.

“They can provide a kind of interpretative assistance, which helps undecided voters make up their mind,” acknowledges a joint publication of Wapor and the Foundation for Information called Who’s Afraid of Election Polls? “But the media are full of such interpretative aids, which are usually disguised and exert a subtle influence, whether in the form of journalists’ speculation, politicians’ showy claims to victory, or the selective choice of photos, quotes. Among these judgmental sources, election polls are a relatively neutral and rational interpretative aid.”

On this point the Supreme Court agrees. In its 2001 decision ruling in favor of publishing pre-election surveys, the court rejected the contention that these confuse the voters. Instead, the court said, “To sustain the ban on survey results would sanction the censorship of all speaking by candidates in an election on the ground that the usual bombasts and hyperbolic claims made during the campaign can confuse the voters and thus debase the electoral process.”

A concurring opinion said further: “The provision in dispute does not prohibit paid hacks from trumpeting the qualifications of their candidates. In fine, while survey organizations who employ scientific methods and engage personnel trained in the social sciences to determine sociopolitical trends are barred from publishing their results within the specified periods, any two-bit scribbler masquerading as a legitimate journalist can write about the purported strong showing of his candidate without any prohibition or restraint.”

Thus, so far, the Philippines is among the 36 out 66 countries surveyed by Wapor in 2002 that are without an embargo on the publication of findings from political polls. Of the 30 with embargoes, though, Luxembourg has the longest: 30 days before elections (the count including the voting day itself), survey results can no longer be published.