Senator Tatad and the surveys

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Senator Tatad and the surveys
Sunday, 03 14, 2010

Senator Francisco “Kit” Tatad is trying to make a comeback to the Philippine Senate. He is running under the Puwersa ng Masa ticket of the hugely resurgent Joseph Ejercito Estrada.

Despite his exemplary performance for two terms as senator of the Republic, four years of them as majority leader, and his being in the constant consciousness of the Filipino electorate for the 41 years that he has been in public service, Tatad has yet to land in the top 12 of today’s surveys on senatorial candidates.

Tatad is optimistic he will win, and takes comfort in the classic “defeat” of Harry Truman at the hands of the pollsters who had the surveys proclaiming Thomas Dewey as the choice of the electorate in the 1948 US presidential polls. The pollsters were proven wrong, and Truman went on to become president of the United States.

Why do the survey results continue to exclude Tatad, who stands head and shoulders above many of those who now revel in their top slots, as churned out by mercenary survey outfits masquerading as crystal ball operators?

Tatad – in behalf of the millions who voted for him in 1992 and again in 1995, and those whom he has converted to his side with his scholarly dissection of Constitutional issues that would put many lawyers pretending to be Constitutional experts to shame – has every reason to wonder why, and he has taken the survey outfits to task, head-on.

Tatad says the Social Weather Station (SWS) should first explain its fatally flawed exit polls in the 2004 elections in Metro-Manila before it conducts yet another opinion poll related to the 2010 elections, and that Pulse Asia should disclose to the public how many candidates have paid how much in order to participate in and benefit from the surveys.

This is the irreducible minimum ethical and profesional requirement before the two firms resume their unrestrained effort to shape public perceptions in the 2010 elections. Tatad insists that the electorate have the right to make this demand in light of the far from exemplary records of SWS and Pulse Asia and the unaccountable persuasive power they now seem to possess.

Tatad recalls that on May 11, 2004, within hours of the close of balloting, SWS announced that Gloria Arroyo got 31 percent of the votes in Metro-Manila as against Fernando Poe, Jr. who reportedly got 23 percent. The SWS announcement was dutifully recorded around the world. However, when the official Commission on Elections count came, FPJ took Metro-Manila with 36.67 percent of the votes, while Arroyo got 26.26 percent. SWS had messed up in an exit poll, where no professional pollster should.

Yet, SWS simply carried on as though its credibility had not at all been tainted nor polluted.

Tatad points out serious limitations—from the questionnaire design, to the sampling method, to the manner of interviewing respondents, to the collation, analysis and interpretation of data. And he laments that despite these limitations, SWS once again seeks to foist itself upon the electorate as a competent and faithful interpreter of public opinion as the campaign enters its critical stages.

Similarly, Tatad is asking Pulse Asia to make a full disclosure of the services it has sold to politicians who are eager to rate in the surveys. At the Kapihan sa Sulo, where Tatad serves as Resident Constitutionalist, Tatad showed to us documents bearing the letterhead of Pulse Asia, inviting politicians to participate in its surveys at the rate of P400,000.00 per head, and to introduce “rider” questions about their candidacies at P100,000.00 each.

Indeed, from our recollection, the politicians’ names have never been published, and neither have the “rider” questions. Since the questionnaire forms the soul of any survey, it should be neutral and not biased for or against anyone. But the fact that paying politicians are allowed to contribute their own questions is not the best way of ensuring the neutrality and objectivity of the questions. And it does not prevent anyone from asking what else is being sold aside from the questions.

Tatad is clamoring for a new set of professional survey outfits, given the dismal and questionable performance of SWS and Pulse Asia, and to the extent that opinion polling can be done according to the highest professional and ethical standards.

I conducted my own uneducated and informal survey — call it primitive and unreliable, if you like — at a seminar where I served as discussant on the credibility of electoral surveys. The participants were simply asked to write at least 12 names of the senators they would vote for. Thirty-four responded, but not all of them completed the 12 names. But 32 of the 34 respondents indicated Tatad among their choices.

So there. That should put a lie to those paid survey results. Fransciso “Kit” Tatad, that irrepressible Bicolano who has served the country well, will be elected senator of the Republic, the surveys notwithstanding.

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And speaking of irrepressible Bicolanos, I know of one who’s celebrating — or ruing — his birthday today. As a Senate service chief for twenty-two years, Dan Pinto, a.k.a. Leina de Legazpi, has steered his underpopulated, ragtag staff to perform difficult tasks immediately, and impossible things a little bit longer. Happy 63rd birthday, Dan/Leina.

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