Loren: A legato in the surveys

E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Loren: A legato in the surveys
Sunday, 05 06, 2007

Former Sen. Loren Legarda has been lording it over the surveys. No survey outfit has yet to show Loren drop a rung lower than the topmost. In fact, she is stretching her lead over her closest pursuer for a seat in the Senate in the Fourteenth Congress.

The surveys notwithstanding, Loren is still campaigning like hell. Not that she does not believe in the current surveys, but that she wants to prove past surveys wrong on her unbelievable loss in the May 2004 elections. Loren won the electoral votes for vice president but lost in the count, and the surveys supported the results of the cheating that surrounded the proclamation of her rival.

The surveys showed then Sen. Noli de Castro outpacing Loren, a lead that was a miracle in itself considering his lack of qualifications and dismal performance in the Senate. Which makes one wonder what methodology — scientific, analytic or chaotic — was used in those surveys.

Surveys are supposed to measure the opinions and perceptions of voters in regard to a candidate’s popularity, qualifications and platform, including the voters’ preferences for candidates on public issues. But these standards were woefully missing in the surveys for the May 2004 elections.

A survey that preys on the respondent’s propensity to make a choice without considering the candidates’ credentials or actual performance — is hardly the survey that educates the public on the importance of making good choices. When the survey relies on the certainty that a predetermined set of respondents will unerringly pick one from among a set of choices, the agenda of the pollsters immediately becomes suspect. Either the outfit has been bought to come up with figures that would confirm a predetermined conclusion, or that the outfit started on the premise that notwithstanding the choices made by the respondents to the survey, the conclusion must be supported at all costs.

The surveys that really count are those that never see print and are used exclusively to guide the drift of the campaign strategies. The surveys that are bandied about by those favored by the results should be viewed for what they really are: nothing but propaganda materials and, therefore, must never be the imprimatur on a candidate’s ability to win or predisposition to lose.

That the pollsters get paid in order to conduct surveys already militates against the validity of the results or of a fair reading of the conclusions made out of the figures generated.

We have been fed results of surveys conducted on the same set of respondents answering the same set of questions posed by different survey outfits. Why the different outfits should come up with different results, after they admitted using the same methodology, is in itself confusing. This dissonance of results does not lend to an intelligent discussion on where preferences are drifting, and to what extent the greater mass of the public who did not participate in the surveys is going to be swayed by the purported results.

Survey results always give rise to many questions that require answers which defy the very numbers they present. It baffles the mind that the preferences of 2,500 respondents are allowed to speak for 45 million voters on a question like “If elections were held today, who would you vote for senator?” Scientific or not, a conclusion derived out of this miniscule segment of the population does not carry any weight to make the rest of those uninvolved to go along with the results. It only tends to confuse and hardly reflects intelligent choices at all.

Voters are intelligent, however, varied their yardstick in making choices may be. But there is a thin line between intelligent voting and pack voting, the latter being the kind promoted by most surveys and which causes a great disservice to the electorate. The voters should not be swayed one way or the other by the results of surveys.

To regulate the use of surveys, the Fair Elections Act prohibits the publication of survey results for national candidates 15 days before election day. This cut-off period, however, is anti-climactic; it comes too late, after previous slanted surveys had already inflicted harm on the electorate. Good candidates who do not figure in the surveys get waylaid. The candidates who figure prominently in the surveys, but who nonetheless could not hold a torch to those good candidates who have been routed by the surveys, go on merrily, unhampered in the race and slug it out until election day. That is the disservice these surveys give us: They decide for the voters, rightly and wrongly, but most often the kind that brings disaster to our governance.

Which is why Loren has campaigned hard these past 82 days, espousing her advocacies, pointing out her accomplishments, and showing to the people how their votes for her in 2004 were unbelievably not counted.

Loren has wisely avoided being held captive by the results of the surveys. Others have wasted precious time, which they could have devoted to campaigning, in giving explanations for their dismal ratings.

The surveys do not make Loren the winner; rather, it is her performance and her credibility as the real winner for vice president in the May 2004 elections. The voters see a charlatan or a non-performer when they see one, and Loren is not one of either. Loren will come out the top winner, all right, not because the surveys say so, but because on election day the people will reward her for her past performance — and prove to everyone that she was cheated in the May 2004 elections.

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