Preliminary and unofficial results of the midterm senatorial elections are prompting private pollsters to reassess how they conduct and frame pre-election surveys, particularly in light of unexpected outcomes that diverged from their final forecasts.
In interviews with GMA-7 early Tuesday, the day after the midterm elections, representatives from Social Weather Stations (SWS) and OCTA Research acknowledged the stronger-than-anticipated performance of independent candidates Bam Aquino and Francis Pangilinan. Both are currently in the top five of the 12 winning senatorial slots, with around 80 percent of votes tallied in the unofficial count.
“All the names are there, but the rankings are different,” said OCTA Research president and University of the Philippines professor Ranjit Rye. “Of course, it could still change—there’s still 20 percent of the vote left to be counted.” While all projected winners appeared in OCTA’s late April survey, their relative standings caught analysts off guard.
SWS co-founder Mahar Mangahas noted that only nine of the “Magic 12” candidates from their May 2–6 survey are currently within the winning circle. He said this underscores the need to review their polling design and question formulation—especially given that the final SWS survey still showed 18 percent of respondents were undecided.
“What are the new questions we should be asking?” Mangahas reflected. “For instance, ‘When did you finally decide who to vote for?’”
Mangahas said these unofficial results could have been better explained if there were exit polls conducted. It was in 2016 that an exit poll was conducted, he noted.
According to Rye, their data suggests that about 20 percent of undecided voters make their choice in the final week, with another 20 percent deciding on election day itself.
Screengrab of senatorial election partial results via gmanetwork.com.
