Atheista -

The Social Weather Station (SWS) recently released a new poll regarding voter preferences of Filipino voters for Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s replacement come 2010. It comes without a surprise that Noynoy Aquino is far an away the leader with 60% of the respondents saying that he can be an acceptable successor to Arroyo. What’s worth noting is that he came out of nowhere to claim this spot – he wasn’t even part of past surveys!

The first thing we have to look at is what the numbers actually mean. It doesn’t mean that 60% of the respondents would vote for Noynoy Aquino if elections were held today – it only means that 60% consider him as a good replacement for the current president. Respondents can have multiple answers so the 60% is actually an upper limit for the number that he can get. It can be surmised that 40% will not consider voting for President had the elections been held during the day of the survey. That being said, the current support for any candidate on this list is considerably less than the number on the graph.

But even if it doesn’t reflect the numerical value of current support, it’s also important to note that the situation is still very fluid. If certain candidates pull out, they can still bolster the numbers of those who are in the race. This is were a wider base of “secondary supporters” come into play. For example, Noynoy Aquino and Mar Roxas would have been mutually approved in the survey sheets of most of their supporters. With a Mar Roxas pull out, Aquino would then monopolize those votes and consolidate them into a stronger block of ACTUAL support.

The sidelight perhaps is Loren Legarda. She probably won’t run for president; nor has she any chance of winning the top office for the rest of her life, but for a stretch of time from September 2007 to February 2009, Legarda was actually within striking distance of the top spot. This is reminiscent of the late Raul Roco’s performance in surveys prior to 2001 wherein he was constantly topping polls. While it was clear that Roco did himself in with the exposure of his lackluster political machinery, dodgy choice of senatoriables and *ugh* running mate; it is unclear what Legarda did to sabotage her own chances.

A lot of people hated Legarda for flip-flopping on Gloria – and ironically, this is despite the already growing hatred for the GMA Administration back in 2004 — but she still managed to bag 44% of the respondents’ votes of confidence back in 2007. I guess that only means that the 2004 incident was not the reason why she was dropped. The only hypothesis I could offer is that her supporters identified with Noynoy Aquino and Manny Villar – the two candidates whose popularity rose as hers was plummeting.

One interesting sidelight is how surprisingly bad Chiz Escudero’s showing has been. Despite topping the recent senatorial polls and taking every opportunity to spew out empty words on television, Escudero’s preference ratings have stayed pretty much the same over the last 2 years. There is no momentum at all. I won’t even be surprised if he finishes a distant third (or even fourth) when all is said and done. Joseph Estrada might even erode his chances of a third spot finish (not that it matters!) since Escudero’s base of support is supposedly the youth – a demographic that is also captured by the Aquino juggernaut.

As for Villar, I think it’s safe to say that his base is solid. Unfortunately for him, this base isn’t strong enough. And oh, there’s a character named Gilbert Teodoro as well who did a *cough* masterful *cough* job with the Ondoy relief.

I would be very surprised if Noynoy Aquino and Mar Roxas aren’t the two left standing come June 2010. My heart weeps that Loren got Roco’d.

Link: the actual release from SWS

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