A troublesome survey question

Among the many questions in the 1985 sociopolitical survey of the Bishops-Businessmen’s Conference (BBC) for Human Development, was this: “If Ferdinand Marcos runs for president again in the next election, do you think many people in this area will vote for him?” It was part of the questionnaire I had drafted, as the survey’s technical director; it passed the BBC’s research committee without ado, and was duly implemented.

When the 1985 survey was completed in July, it reinforced the prime findings of the previous year’s BBC survey, that had found two-thirds disagreement with Marcos’ authoritarian powers to legislate by decree and to detain persons by his personal fiat alone. The trouble was that it also found a majority—I don’t remember the percentage now—saying that “many” (marami, in Filipino) in their area would vote for Marcos if he ran again for president in the next election, which at that time was still scheduled for 1987.

In my public presentation of the survey in September 1985, I pointed out that the question was not a standard voting-intention probe. Since, firstly, it asked for the respondents’ perceptions of the voters in their area, not for the respondents’ own voting intentions, and, secondly, it did not identify any potential opponent(s) of Marcos in such an election, the question could not elicit an estimate of the proportion of Marcos votes.

Marcos, seemingly unfazed, made a surprise announcement a few weeks later, on live US television, that he was calling a “snap” election in February 1986. He even said that he expected to win the snap election, on the basis of the new BBC survey’s finding—which as I have explained, did not estimate his voting strength.

I assumed that Marcos, being brilliant, could not have misunderstood the 1985 BBC survey, and was merely bluffing. A few years later, Alex Melchor, his former executive secretary, told me privately that Marcos was then already very sick—but keeping it secret—and just might have read his cards wrong, for a change. Even the very best poker players get tired; they know they should pace themselves.

The present context: why should Sara Duterte be a shoo-in for president in 2028? I chose today’s topic because many pundits are claiming that Vice President Sara Duterte’s open ambition to be our next president is unstoppable, “based on the surveys.” These claims beg the obvious question of who (plural) will be contending for the presidency against VP Duterte in 2028.

What Social Weather Stations (SWS) polls every quarter is the public satisfaction with the top officials of the government in performing their jobs. Now, one doesn’t compare a VP’s rating with that of the president. And one doesn’t assume that a president’s rating is easily passed on to whoever he anoints as successor.

Vice President Sara’s latest rating is just short of our classification of +30, which SWS considers “Good”—see “Social Weather Report: Net satisfaction rating for Vice-President Duterte at +28, Senate President Sotto at +16, Speaker Dy at +5, and Chief Justice Gesmundo at +9,” www.sws.org.ph, 2/10/26. The SWS report has the history for all previous vice presidents, from Salvador Laurel to Leni Robredo, in the past four decades of steady quarterly polling. For a VP, Sara’s numbers are decent, not fantastic.

SWS has shown, from polls commissioned by Stratbase Consultancy, that the people have long been expecting VP Sara to answer the charges of corruption that are presently the subject of impeachment complaints against her. As the complaints proceed to trial, public opinion will get negatively affected; that’s why the VP’s camp is fighting against it.

It’s not too soon to do polls about 2028. For all I know it has already started, secretly. For general suggestions on how to do it, see “Who might win in 2028?” inquirer.net, 12/13/25.

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(The story of how Social Weather Stations spun off from the 1984 and 1985 sociopolitical surveys of the Bishops-Businessmen’s Conference for Human Development is in the introduction to my book, “The Philippine Social Climate: from the SWS surveys,” Anvil Publishing, 1994.)

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mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph

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