Presidential candidate Manuel A. Roxas 2nd spent P257 million on television ads from Aug. 15 to Sept. 15 to push up his ratings in the presidential preference polls undertaken by PulseAsia from Sept. 8 to 14, and by the Social Weather Stations from Sept. 2 to 5 as well.
Given the basic flaw of such polls as practiced in this country, the massive spending for ads in a monthâs time â P9 million a day â raised Roxas 2ndâs ratings to 20 percent from the poll bodyâs survey in June, when only 10 percent of the respondents said they would vote for him in 2016.
The Roxas camp, I was told, has also put up billboards worth P100 million mostly outside Metro Manila to increase his name-recall. (Never mind, of course, that this practice is illegal before the official campaign period starts. âJust donât say in the ad, âVote for meâ,â an election lawyer I asked explained.)
The TV networks supplied Roxasâ advertising costs, although instead of the actual billings, they used the advertising firm Nielsenâs rate cards, which contained the networksâ advertising rates, and for each time slot.
Roxasâ camp initially wanted the PulseAsia polls to be undertaken in August, right after President Aquino announced on July 31 that his DILG Secretary would be their partyâs candidate for President in the 2016 elections.
The survey, however, was delayed for technical reasons. The polling firm in its report, though, still referred to Aquinoâs âofficial endorsementâ as one of the âkey developments that took place in the weeks immediately prior to and during the conduct of the interviews for the survey.â
Roxas 2ndâs strategy was to conceal the impact of the massive TV ads. Instead, it portrayed the doubling of his ratings â from 10 percent in June to 20 percent in September â as a result of Aquinoâs âendorsementâ power.
Aquinoâs cousin, Rafael Lopa, had been president of PulseAsia â that was just a few years back, during which he studied the intricacies and nuances of polling in the Philippines, including how to use it for propaganda. While neither Lopa nor any of Aquinoâs relatives still remained with PulseAsia at the time of the September poll, it is believed that the Liberal Party or some financial supporter has been commissioning most of the firmâs surveys.
TV ads crucial
The reason why TV ads are crucial in presidential surveys is the fact that TV news now has become the main source of information for 50 to 70 percent of respondents, according to surveys I have seen.
Only 30 percent of respondents report that their main source of information is âfamily and friends.â Radio news accounts for 28 percent, while newspapers (mostly tabloids, and only one of them) 10 percent. Other surveys even report that only 5 percent of respondents say that they get their information on national issues and politics from newspapers. Despite all the hype on social media, it reaches barely 4 percent of voters, which is not surprising since most Filipinos are poor and donât own PCs.
âTalo ka na kaagad, if you donât have TV ads,â Richard Gordon, who ran in the 2010 presidential elections said. âWe had no choice but to have TV ads, but then we didnât have the money to sustain that,â he explained.
It is indisputable even among pollsters in the US that a surveyâs timing is crucial in the kind of response interviewers receive from their sample. The Aquino camp, in collaboration with PulseAsia, has been adept in using this technique.
For example, in its bid to trigger a coup in 2007, PulseAsia all of a sudden came up with a survey that posed the question: âWho do you think has been the countryâs most corrupt President?â President Arroyo came out as the most corrupt in that survey, with President Joseph Estrada, who was convicted of plunder, coming in third, after Marcos.
Of course she would, given that weeks and days before the survey, newspapersâ front-pages had banner headlines on allegations of corruption against Arroyo and her family â although not a single one of those allegations had been proven after seven years, so that today some other names than hers come to the fore when questions about corruption are raised. What respondent at that time would bother to jog his memory to remember Estradaâs graft money from jueteng and the tobacco excise tax?
Who asked and paid for the survey? âI did,â said Senator Sergio Osmeña 3rd at that time, one of the most vocal allies of Aquino. âAny problem with that?â the haughty senator said with an ear-to-ear grin.
Roxasâ face appeared in the ads for a month, and for a few minutes on primetime TV. That would somehow stick in viewersâ minds.
After that, a PulseAsia interviewer approaches a respondent and asks âQuick, quick, who would you vote for if elections were held today, and youâve got to choose or youâd appear stupid?â Naturally, the respondents will choose the name of the first image that comes to their mind.
Note that PulseAsia and SWS have never asked a critical question that would change poll results very radically, as numerous critiques of opinion polling all over the world have pointed out. This is the question: Have you decided which candidate to vote for as President in the May 2016 election? Responsible and professional pollsters abroad would not force respondents to choose a candidate if he replied first that he hadnât made his choice. More on that in my future columns.
Itâs âquick, quickâ because PulseAsia and its rival SWS often ask a respondent (would you believe?) 150 to 200 questions â ârider questionsâ they call these â for each of their survey âruns.â
These often include such market-research questions as the kind of toothpaste or deodorant a respondent uses, since a particular survey may involve dozens of âriders,â each with his own set of questions, for which they paid the pollster P50,000 to P1 million, for a sample of 1,200 respondents. (Why canât PulseAsia and SWS, which claim to be champions of democracy, be transparent and tell us how many questions they ask, and what are these for every survey they undertake, and how much income they get for these?)
I wonder if PulseAsia and SWS ask before the who-will-you-vote-for question: Do you believe the allegations of corruption against Binay being investigated in the Senate?
We wouldnât know whether such questions were asked unless these pollsters make public their actual survey questionnaire, but they have never done so.
This, dear reader, is what our purportedly noble exercise in democracy has come to. Toward May next year, the amount of TV ads a candidate can pay for could determine who would be in charge of the fate of 100 million Filipinos for the next six years.
And thatâs why Aquino and Roxas, who have spent the past five years making sure that by hook or by crook they have the campaign funds, are confident theyâll still win, despite the utter mess theyâve done to the country.
Why Duterte begged off
I wouldnât be surprised if ex-would-be presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte had heard of Roxas 2ndâs P257 million splurging on a TV ad campaign for just a month, and decided itâs useless for him to run.
Ignoring the reports that he was ill, Duterte likely refused to run because â despite all the prodding from his fans, who even held a demonstration in Manila to show him their support â the rich businessmen egging him on to run hadnât really put their money where their mouths were. Other than the Dominguez and Alcantara clans of Davao, there hasnât been a report of a tycoon taking action to support his bid. And both the Dominguezes and Alcantaras arenât exactly the type to put up front ârealâ contributions in the scale of say P100 or P200 million.
Yes, thatâs the kind of money our elite give to the candidates they bet on, with probably half of that going to the likely runner-up, and maybe even a third to a basement dweller. Thatâs why if you look back: those who ran for the presidency and vice presidency and lost, didnât brood in melancholy, but often transferred to a more posh village or bought a Manhattan apartment.
I was told that yes, some businessmen were donating to Duterteâs campaign chest, but gave only âloose change,â that is, in the scheme of things, a million pesos here, maybe 2 million there. Duterte was waiting till the last minute to get pledges of the real kind. But nothing came.
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