Rating war

It’s war out there—I mean the battle among the presidential candidates for the bragging right of holding the lead in the popularity surveys. The war is a take-no-prisoners combat —meaning all techniques and tricks of the polling trade can be employed and are brought into play to win the battle.

The rating war used to be fought exclusively and with ferocity by the giant networks, with the objective of cornering the larger slice of the advertising pie. Each trundles out statistics claiming that its shows and telenovelas and inane show biz talk shows beat all competitors barring none in viewership—all for the purpose of convincing everyone, particularly advertisers, to stay supporting it.

Not anymore. Politicians have been convinced by polling hotshots that registering superior ratings works not only for networks (to get more advertising placements) but also for candidates to win more votes.

I visited Prof. Ted W. Alangmalay one morning at his PR and Statistics Center office to find out what makes the polling business tick. Business must be good, I thought as I surveyed the professor’s luxurious digs. Ted was the media relations man of the political party office I used to head. I don’t know how he acquired the “professor” moniker.

I went straight to the point and asked if the numbers they’re trotting out are true: “Tell me, Ted, what’s the score on the survey racket? Totoo ba talaga lahat nang sinasabi n’yong poll findings?”

The professor bolted from his chair and ran to shut the door and windows. “Shh, not so loud,” he said when he came back to his chair. “What were you asking?”

“I was wondering kung totoo ba lahat yang mga survey-survey na ’yan.”

He said they were for real: “Of course, totoo kami. We exist, politicians pay us good money, so totoo kami.”

“No, I’m talking about your output, if they are really true, if they truly reflect the sentiments of the public,” I said.

It depends, he said. “Depende on who we are conducting the survey for.”

“What do you  mean?”

“Well,” he said, “if it’s Binay we are doing the survey for, we report the unvarnished truth that the numbers show he is way ahead in the survey.”

“And if it’s Duterte’s backers who commissioned you to do the survey?”

“If it’s Duterte’s supporters who paid us to do the survey, siempre we will not tell them the bad news if Duterte has fallen behind Binay.”

“You will ‘doctor’ the findings?”

He hedged: “’Di naman ganon ka-brutal ang word.  Make some adjustments, that’s what we’ll do.”

“Like?”

“Like, we move around the numbers some, perform here and there dagdag-bawas surgery, and voila, we’ve achieved the more palatable product we in the business term a statistical tie.”

I couldn’t understand. “Since you’d be peddling a lie anyway,” I said, “why not go the whole hog? Why not say that Duterte has grabbed the lead from Binay?”

He told me of the wisdom of going slow: “Darating tayo dyan. Ika nga ni Amang

Rodriguez, you are too at once.  Masyado kang adelantado. ’Pag sinabi namin na biglang umarangkada lagpas kay Binay si Duterte, eh baka maapektuhan ang aming credibility.”

“How do you explain the surge of Duterte in the survey to place him in a statistical tie with Binay?”

“We minted a new technical term. We said Binay took a stationary dive in the rating.”

“Stationary dive? What’s that?” I demanded to know.

“It means Binay just stayed put where he was, doing no aggressive effort all the while that Duterte supporters were flooding media outlets with infomercials and the electric posts and fences of private homes with their man’s posters.”

“So how do you think this rating war would eventually pan out?”

“It will end up with the presidentiables hurling claims and counterclaims, invectives and counterinvectives at each other while the pollsters run laughing with the money all the way to the bank.”

Gualberto B. Lumauig ([email protected]) is past president of the UST Philosophy and Letters Foundation and former governor/congressman of Ifugao.