The First SWS Public Opinion Report

Two days after the last State of the Nation Address, the SWS board of directors (vice president Linda Guerrero, secretary Jasmin Acuña, Jorge Tigno, Antonio La Viña, Dennis Arroyo, and myself; treasurer Ned Roberto couldn’t make it) had the opportunity to visit President Noynoy Aquino in Malacañang.

Naturally, we expressed appreciation for the recent Sona’s citation of SWS quarterly data on hunger. (Unless the government reforms its statistical system, the next batch of official figures on poverty, food-poverty and nutrition will only come out in 2014, more than half-way into P-Noy’s term.)

The main purpose of our visit was to present the President with originals of “The First SWS Public Opinion Report” (June 1986) and “A Social Weather Report: Public Reactions to the August 28, 1987 Coup Attempt.” They are mementos of great importance in the history of open public opinion polling in the Philippines.

President Noynoy received them graciously, in his casual style. In a good mood, he related to us the letter he had just received from his former teacher in Filipino, thanking him for thanking her in his Sona.

The June 1986 national survey was the first project of Social Weather Stations after its formal establishment on Aug. 8, 1985. It was part of a two-year research partnership with the Ateneo de Manila University. Twenty-five years ago, it was the first poll freely reported within the democratic space opened by President Corazon Aquino. We remember it now to mark the culmination of SWS’ silver jubilee.

It was a follow-up to the 1984 and 1985 socio- political polls by the Bishops-Businessmen’s Conference for Human Development, during Marcos’ authoritarian period, which managed to get presented in public only by hiding, so to speak, behind the skirts of Jaime Cardinal Sin. The BBC polls’ findings that two of every three Filipinos opposed Marcos’ legislation by decree and detention of persons by fiat were suppressed by pro-government media like the Daily Express, and came out only in media like Mr. & Ms. magazine and the foreign press.  Marcos was tolerant because he would misrepresent the 1985 BBC poll as showing that he would win if he ran for president again.

The June 1986 poll revealed how appreciated Cory’s new government was. The revered phrase “People Power” was the reason overwhelmingly cited for accepting its legitimacy. Far in second place was the belief that she was the true winner of the February 1986 snap election. After all, with the official election tally by the Batasang Pambansa calling it for Marcos, and the parallel count by Namfrel calling it for Cory, how could one be sure who won?

When the SWS-Ateneo steering committee mulled over its first survey agenda, there was a discussion on whether to include the question: “For whom did you vote in the snap election of February 1986?”  Suppose, someone said, the majority answered that they had voted for Marcos?

I am proud to recall that the discussion was short. We did not shrink from using the scientific tool at our disposal to search for the truth about the people’s will in the snap election. The result, we informed President Noynoy last week, was that 66 percent answered that they had voted for Cory Aquino.

The June 1986 survey found President Cory’s initial net satisfaction rating to be a Very Good +53. In October 1986 (at that time the SWS surveys were only done twice a year), Cory reached a net +72, which is to this day the presidential record-high. No president after her ever hit net +70, the borderline for our category of Excellent.

The second memento was about a special SWS survey in Metro Manila in September 1987, commissioned by Agriculture Secretary Carlos “Sonny” Dominguez.  The piece, “The social weather: most unfavorable for a coup,” reported that President Cory’s stalwart resistance to the August coup attempt was very popular. I related to President Noynoy that, after I had privately briefed his mother on the poll, her reaction was so humble: “And I thought the people didn’t like me anymore.”

In 1987 there were only two national opinion polls, one in March, with Cory’s net rating at a Very Good +69, and the other in October, finding it at +36 or merely Good. Since her resistance to the coup attempt had rallied the people around her (based on other questionnaire items), this implied that her rating was lower than +36 before the attempt occurred.

President Cory Aquino had her ups and downs, but her downs were not remarkably low.

When rating a president, the people are evaluating her/his governance, and not rating democracy as opposed to authoritarianism. For the latter issue, there is a different survey question in standard international usage, which SWS runs once or twice a year, and which has always resulted in a dominant preference for democracy.

Worldwide, the emergence of open or non-secret opinion polling has depended mainly on the opening of democratic space; the requisite social science capacity is already available almost anywhere.  Now there are polls in Russia and other parts of the old USSR, Eastern Europe, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Israel, Palestine, and Egypt.

Even while open opinion research is politically non-partisan and neutral on policy issues, it takes a stand on critical things.  Democracy and freedom of speech are absolutely essential for it to prosper.

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Contact SWS: www.sws.org.ph or mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph.