Instant poll surveys

The Commission on Elections announced recently that certificates of candidacy for all national and local positions in the 2016 polls should be filed from Oct. 12 to 16. Between now and that period, the prospective candidates can think things over on whether or not to throw their hat in the political ring.

Running for an elective position in our country is an expensive operation. The campaign costs are directly proportional to the prestige or level of influence of the position aspired for. Even the supposedly nonpartisan barangay elections—where the officials receive allowances depending on the availability of funds—have taken on the costly character of regular elections.

Before filing their certificates of candidacy, aspirants who do not have money to burn or wealthy supporters to lean on may have to carefully weigh their chances of winning.

The odds can be measured either through an informal survey or by engaging the services of a professional research or polling company.

The informal approach, although less expensive, may not be able to reasonably gauge the true sentiments of the surveyed area. A formal survey may entail some costs but its results are more credible and can be used to map out an effective campaign.

If the survey were conducted by a reputable company and the results are favorable, the information can be “leaked” to the media to jumpstart a candidate’s campaign or create a bandwagon effect.

It is common knowledge that Filipinos prefer to be identified with or to bet on winners. A vote is considered wasted if it does not result in the election of the candidate in whose favor it was cast.

The two leading poll companies in the country today are Social Weather Stations and Pulse Asia Research Inc. Their findings on social and political issues are regularly reported in the media.

When the campaign for the 2016 elections reels off in October, expect surveys on electoral preferences to proliferate.

Often, at the forefront of this activity are existing market research companies whose principal business is to conduct surveys on product preferences (or taste tests), brand awareness and other marketing studies for commercial products.

These companies can quickly reformat their organization to include in their regular research activities questions on electoral choices.

Since the effort will usually not require the employment of additional staff or preparation of new research modules, the costs of politically-oriented surveys are often less expensive.

Some candidates may, however, not want to go through this process. If their intention is to make it appear that a survey was conducted and its results are favorable to his or her candidacy, the latter, through a PR company, can make it appear that so-and-so polling company conducted a survey and the results went in his or her way.

Anybody can claim to have organized a research company and conducted a survey on electoral choices. There is no government office or self-regulatory association that oversees survey activities.

In past elections, fly-by-night polling companies tried to create the impression of legitimacy on their operation through self-proclaimed political analysts who commented on their survey results and made forecasts on the outcome of the election.

These resource persons later turned out to be stockholders of the company or in their payroll as consultants.

With the right amount of incentives, the bogus survey results can be treated as newsworthy by the staff of newspapers or radio and TV stations and given publicity.

In addition to traditional media, there is social media that can be exploited to spread the manufactured results. A corps of savvy netizens can efficiently do the job for a minimal cost.

Much as the Commission on Elections wants to regulate the activities of polling companies to prevent the manipulation of public opinion, its hands are tied by the constitutional provisions on free speech and press freedom.

The Supreme Court has ruled that political surveys and the publication of their results are constitutionally protected and therefore cannot be unduly restrained.

The most that the Comelec can do is to require the survey companies to disclose the identity of the people who paid for or commissioned the survey.

By identifying the financiers, the Comelec will supposedly be able to determine if the survey is truthful or biased in favor of its funders and take the appropriate remedial measures.

The problem with this assumption is, dummies can be reported as financiers of the survey and it would be difficult to prove they acted under instructions of certain candidates to manipulate the results.

To date, only SWS and Pulse Asia have shown to have the competence and capacity to conduct surveys with reasonable credibility and accuracy. Their findings can be considered a snapshot or bird’s eye view of the sentiments of the respondents.

Although the results are not predictive of the outcome of the election, the information that can be extracted from the survey may be useful in determining a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses.

With regard to fly-by-night polling companies, their findings should be taken with a grain of salt. They should be treated as political propaganda designed to take advantage of many of our countrymen’s herd mentality on election results.

Raul J. Palabrica (rpalabrica@inquirer.com.ph) writes a weekly column in the Business section of the Inquirer.