JANUARY - JUNE 2004
Special Election Issue
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 Campaigns on the High-Tech Road PHOTO ESSAY
ELECTION PERSPECTIVES
The Enigma of the Popular Will VOTER'S VOICE
THE LIGHTER SIDE
Making (Non)Sense of Politics Election Lexicon Quickie Quiz for the Politically Insane
T H E C A M P A I G N — M U C H A D O A B O U T N U M B E R S
FOR ALL their wariness about the effects of having the public know the results of political polls, politicians cannot seem to get enough of them. Indeed, although many subscribe to survey outfits (the SWS and Pulse Asia, among others), a handful of politicians have gone as far as having private pollsters.
Laylo, for example, supervises the in-house polling at the Palace. At the SWS where he was once connected, Laylo had handled all of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s accounts since 1994, when she decided to run for the Senate. A friendship obviously developed, with First Gentleman Mike Arroyo standing as sponsor at Laylo’s wedding years later (the pollster married another pollster, Carrie, also formerly of the SWS and now working freelance).
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For the May elections, Laylo insisted that he has no role in campaign politics and continues to focus on governance polls. But an Arroyo adviser says Laylo works closely with a U.S. consultant the president has hired in directing the election surveys for Malacañang
In engaging the services of her own pollster, Arroyo takes after her father. Diosdado Macapagal had sought the assistance of Cohen, along with Donald Muntz, of Robot Statistics. Just like his daughter, Macapagal was not one to always heed their advice. When Cohen and Muntz, for example, called his attention to unpopular appointments he had made to the government, Macapagal was said to have answered back, "I am engaged in a reform movement and must take risks. I am not in a popularity contest. I expect adverse reaction and even hostility."
Other presidents had their own private pollsters as well. Marcos had several, among them marketing guru Ned Roberto of the Asian Institute of Management. So did Ramos and Estrada, although in fewer numbers.
Ramos relied heavily on Anthony Abaya, who in November 1990 commissioned a survey with 40,000 respondents to determine not only the breadth but also the depth of support for Ramos. The results of the survey, according to Abaya, firmed up Ramos’s resolve to run for president.
Estrada’s local pollster was the Philippine Survey Research Center (PSRC), said to be the first to conduct coincidental TV surveys, radio research and car radio listenership studies. PSRC’s Raul Esteban was with Estrada from his campaign to his incumbency, working closely with U.S. media consultant Paul Bograd.
Of course, having their own private pollsters has not stopped some chief executives-like Ramos and Arroyo-from still subscribing to surveys run by reputable organizations such as the SWS or Pulse Asia, or both. Ditto with many other politicians from senators and congressmen down to governors and mayors. Ramos, for instance, once commissioned the SWS to do a poll on coal-fired power plants.
SWS’s Guerrero says politicians find it more economical to include questions in the organization’s monthly surveys of 1,200 respondents nationwide. A closed question would cost only P30,000 and an open question P50,000.
Evaluating Surveys
What to Consider when Assessing Poll Results
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In the August to September 2003 survey Osmeña commissioned, for example, the senator had four other questions asked-the favorability of granting amnesty to the Marcos family and their cronies (Yes, 54 percent; No, 45 percent); the favorability of granting amnesty to Estrada (Yes, 64 percent; No, 35 percent); whether the respondent considers himself/herself a victim of human rights violation of the Marcos administration (Yes, 14 percent; No, 86 percent); and whether the respondent is a personal acquaintance of any victim (Yes, 10 percent; No, 90 percent)..
For its four pre-election surveys from January to April, SWS charges a subscription fee of P400,000. Candidates get not only their standing and trust rating, but are also supplied the demographics, on the basis of which they can fine-tune their campaign strategies.
The SWS also undertakes surveys for special constituencies, ideal for people eyeing local public office. These are more expensive: P800,000 for about 50 questions. The surveys cover 300 respondents and normally take three to four weeks to do, says Guerrero.
THERE ARE a few things going against surveys. Contradictory results are one. Errors are another. A classic example is when surveys wrongly predicted the victory of Thomas Dewey in the 1948 U.S. presidential elections. Harry Truman won. Public opinion polls get further discredited when the results are misinterpreted — or manipulated — by the public, academics, politicians, and the media.
But sometimes, someone’s misreading of survey results benefits the public. Marcos, for instance, apparently misread the results of a survey conducted by the Bishop-Businessmen’s Conference (BBC) in 1985 and, on that basis, called for snap elections in February 1986. The survey had asked 2,000 people, “How many in this locality would vote for Ferdinand Marcos if he runs for President again?” Taking the 52 percent who replied “Many/Very Many” to mean he was assured of a fresh mandate, Marcos announced his decision on U.S. television.
What Marcos overlooked, says Mangahas, was a clarification the BBC had made on its survey report that “these are not estimates of the proportions who will vote for a candidate, and that the score 52-37 was not a voting margin.” Years later, Alejandro Melchor, Marcos’s former executive secretary, would tell Mangahas that “maybe…Marcos failed to understand the true situation, since he was already very sick by then.”
A month before the 1986 polls, Consumer Pulse published its survey findings scoring the race at 45 percent for Marcos and 26 percent for his opponent Corazon Aquino. The polling firm, however, was noncommittal about the results. Filipinos were to learn only five years later about a confidential poll the Asia Research Organization, an affiliate of Gallup International, had done on the week of the 1986 elections. It foresaw a tight race between Marcos and Aquino, at 41 percent to 42 percent. Meanwhile, a survey conducted by the SWS and Ateneo de Manila University three months after the elections, which asked respondents who they voted for as president, showed Aquino leading Marcos 64 percent to 27 percent.
Although unrelated to elections, a joint SWS-Manila Standard survey conducted in October 2000 on the “juetenggate” provides yet another interesting case of misreading opinion polls. The survey found that most Filipinos were unsure if the charges of Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis ‘Chavit’ Singson were true or not and were not in favor of President Estrada leaving office. In short, they preferred to give Estrada the benefit of the doubt.
Says Mangahas: “The mistaken thinking of President Joseph Estrada was that the SWS/Manila Standard poll showed popular rejection of the charges of Chavit Singson, leading to his refusal to resign, and instead to tough out the impending impeachment.” The more critical finding, he points out, was that “most people were unsure of the truth, and wanted the issue to be settled by a fair process.”
In the cases of Marcos and Estrada, Mangahas observes, “The misreadings of Marcos in October 1985 and of Estrada in October 2000 were due to hubris rather than to the way the polls were reported.” Looking back, he says these misreadings “led to quicker progress across the Philippines’ bumpy road to better democracy and governance.”
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PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM