SAMMY JULIAN
“EVEN prior to the start of the 2010 presidential campaign and up to the run-up to the actual elections in May of that year, Interior Secretary Mar Roxas II kept a commanding two-digit lead over his rival vice presidential contenders in all surveys conducted by all known poll firms, supposedly a strong indication of how voters would pick the country’s second highest elective official in this year’s national elections.
“But this was not to be the case: as history would show, then Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay, who always came way below Roxas in all the polls, turned out to be victorious in the narrowest margin in the history of vice presidential elections.
“How this came to be? The answer deserves to be tackled in some separate discussion, but the fact is the outcome of surveys can never be 100 percent accurate. In fact, the outcome of a commissioned survey could actually reflect the complete opposite of the actual result. Ergo: such surveys cannot be given more weight than that which is necessary to spare — a mere guessing game for all I care.”
This was the view shared to us by our close friend who sincerely believes Roxas deserves to be the Philippines’ next elected Chief Executive taking over from where his party mate leaves off.
According to our friend: Roxas (“who sacrificed his political ambitions to give way for the presidential candidacy of his then comrade at the Senate, Benigno Aquino III since this is the people’s, and their political party’s choice.”) should be the first one to shrug off poll results on possible presidential contenders for 2016 which showed him coming up way down the list of “vice presidentiables” — the same position held by Binay in 2010 who is now the top contender. (“reversal of roles,” is how our dear compadre described the current scenario.)
“Because he himself was the object in the lead up to the 2010 elections where nearly all pre-election polls suggested a robust victory for him, with polling agencies and media outlets left all red-faced when the results showed a Binay upset.
“This highlight the unreliability of national polling,” said our dear pal and Roxas-believer.
“Observers ought to be mindful of the fact that election polling in the Philippines is a notoriously unreliable exercise.
“It suffers from the political biases of the polling agencies and news outlets that produce the polls. A more serious challenge to reliability comes from operational problems inherent in the country’s mammoth electorate, complex demographics, daunting geography and poor infrastructure, all of which make accurate polling an immensely labor intensive, expensive and often-dubious process.
“But while polling organizations may claim that they now employ the most sophisticated statistical modeling tools available, polling’s history — and the country’s unique blend of confounding factors — has proven it unwise to take Philippine polling as failsafe predictor of voter preference. The best the campaign-watchers can do is wait until the ballots are counted,” our friend lectured.
“This fact keeps the fire burning for us who believes Roxas should run, win and occupy the head office in Malacañang as he is a man truly fit for the job. Even if the results of the polls say otherwise. And there are many of us quiet individuals — more than you think.”
Somehow, our friend was able to convince us to believe in his own premise./PN
