Is Poe’s poll rating a bubble?

In the last five weeks of the May 9 elections, the latest poll survey finds Sen. Grace Poe leading the five presidential candidates with a precarious margin that warns her survey ratings could blow up in her face, like an overstretched bubble as the campaign virulence heats up.

The survey on voters preference, conducted by Pulse Asia from March 15 to 20, showed Poe was the top choice of 28 percent of respondents, or nearly three in 10 Filipino voters would elect her as the next President if the balloting took place during the survey period.

According to the survey, trailing her were Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, 24 percent; Vice President Jejomar Binay, 23 percent; former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, 19 percent; and Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, 2 percent. At this stage, the presidential election has narrowed into a three-way race.

Last week, a Pulse Asia survey showed Poe and Duterte statistically tied at No. 1 with 26 percent, respectively, followed by Binay with 22 percent, Roxas with 20 percent and Santiago with 3 percent.

Poe improved her rating in the latest survey by 2 points. This result shows that her meagre gain has not made her lead irrevocable and there is no way for her to claim that she has established a momentum to lock the results in the remaining few weeks of the campaign. The problem with Poe is she has come to believe in the irreversibility of her narrow lead.

As some independent commentators in the academic community have pointed out, the race is “still neck and neck” and the “gap between Poe and Duterte is not yet that big.” According to this assessment, the next opinion surveys “will probably be more telling,” and if Poe retains her lead in the next survey and the ranking does not change, “that may already be the trend.”

Duterte’s camp echoed the assessment of independent commentators that surveys are indications that everyone is within striking distance and that “the race is still up for grabs.”

The game plan of Poe appears to be using the survey results to drive her campaign, but, in my view, there is nothing in the results to show that respondents are influenced in their choice by voters assessment of  whether she is qualified to run the country as President. The respondents were not asked by the surveys why they made so and so candidate as their first choice for the next President.

All talk, no substance

The factors behind the results of the March 15-20 survey were revealed by Pulse Asia, as follows: prior to and during the conduct of the survey, the following preoccupied the voters:

The presidential debates in Cebu City on March 20 and in Cagayan de Oro City on Feb. 21 gave voters a chance to explain the candidates’ policy platforms and programs, and to observe their extemporaneous response to issues raised against them in debates. The debates proved to be a disappointment in crystallizing the issues because the speakers were allowed only a few minutes to explain and respond to questions. These debates turned out to be an exchange of sound bytes and one-liners that hardly touched the substance of issues.

None of the debaters gave an outstanding and brilliant performance, particularly Poe. There was nothing in her performance to give evidence there was something cerebral between her ears, except knee-jerk repartees. The voter’s preference poll was conducted as Poe faced questions over whether she met the legal requirements to run for the presidency, such as being a natural-born citizen with 10-year residency, and the Supreme Court ruled on March 8 in her favor by overturning the Commission on Elections decision disqualifying her from running for President. This case before the Supreme Court was irrelevant as it had little to do with the issue of her competence to govern if she were elected.

On graft and corruption, an issue that was specifically raised against Binay, Poe, who is not accused of corruption, made matters worst for herself, when she glibly sidetracked the issue by saying that she was “pressing the need to fight poverty and government free from corruption.”

What then is her program to fight poverty and curb corruption, the question being asked her by the public. There was hardly anything on her voluminous policy statement, when she launched her candidacy for the presidency.

 Unmasking pretenders

Poe’s spokespersons have muddled this issue by attributing her “strong” debate performance to “her visit to as many places in the county as possible and communicate her platform to the people.”

Her mouthpieces should be asked, how much nonsense has she disseminated to the public in these forays to deserve her ratings in the surveys? We are afraid all her statements in the campaign have not been helpful in giving the public an idea of what she plans to implement all those promises she has concocted for her vision. The impression that she has left from her campaign visits to the provinces is that she is trying very hard to show she has intellectual substance—something which is not her strongest suit to aspire for the presidency.

The remaining few weeks of the campaign would be critical to the front-runners—in uncovering the sham and the pretenders to the next generation of national leadership.

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