Now, it can be said: surveys are more or less helpful predictors of trends in elections. Noynoy Aquino’s victory is proof positive. Even the Binay strong vice-presidential showings were picked up by the surveys a week or two before the election. The same can be said with Estrada. Even among the senators, the list also showed more or less the same names in the surveys prior to the election.
The remarks against surveys are on record. “I don’t want to use propaganda.” This was the stinging attack of Presidential candidate Dick Gordon against national surveys one or two weeks before the election. Among Dick Gordon’s many claims was that even if he tops the surveys, he would not use the surveys for his campaign. I thought Dick Gordon was joking, really. Not the part where he would top the surveys but the part where he called surveys as merely propaganda.
A week after the election, Dick Gordon offered his piece de resistance on surveys, claiming that “before it was just the money. These days, the new enemy is the survey. There was no good that came out of the surveys except that they were used as a propaganda weapon by those who paid for them”.
Dick Gordon’s bravados, however, were not without merits. For one, surveys do not exist in a vacuum. In other words, bayad sila (paid) by individuals and institutions. The Social Weather Station (SWS), one of the two most prominently used survey institutions by media (Pulse Asia being the other one) for tracking down and generating news on the presidential election identifies the paying institutions for their surveys. You can check SWS website (www.sws.org.ph) to confirm this.
Moreover, one has to put the equation of Philippine politics and governance (so, what’s new ha?), or the kind of politics and governance we have. The brand is simply family affair, and generating surveys are no exceptions. This was the message of Loren Legarda’s attacks on SWS’s survey a week or two before the election. Legarda identified names of the relatives supposedly connected to Mar Roxas who was then leading the vice-presidential survey. Bottom line, survey companies, like any major corporate structures in the Philippines, are bound to be run by a relative of a politician (cousins, uncles, ninong sa kasal, and God forbids, the mistress and lovers). But then again, you can dismiss Legarda’s gripes as another coming from a sour loser.
But whether we take Gordon’s or Legarda’s tirades on surveys as serious or dismiss them as ordinary ranting of losing candidates, the surveys are here to stay. There are some serious accusations though, serious because they involve an attack on the supposed science and less on politics, in the conduct of surveys. Most prominent on this is the number game. The range of survey respondents, more commonly called in the academe as samples, range from a thousand or two. One DZRH commentator asked: How can a 1,000 or 3,000 samples represent the whole country?
The heart of this question, as any academician in his/her right brain functioning, will easily answer: random sampling. There is nothing complicated in the idea of random sampling. It simply means that every member of a group (in our case, the Filipino voters) has an equal chance of being selected. The assumption comes into play. Not all voters will be asked. Thus, the accusations of some political supporters that how come they were not asked in the surveys is simply without substance, precisely because not all voters will be asked.
Without question, the only way to have a 100% surety of the survey is to ask the 50 or so million Filipino voters. Or, logic dictates that the larger the number of respondents or survey participants, the higher the level of certainty, or what the academicians call margin of error. But among those who have conducted actual surveys, getting the 100% population is suicidal. Better still, increasing the number of representation is simply cost-ineffective. Like everything else, the survey is also subject to monetary constraints.
Outside of our surrealistic Republic, survey institutions, such as the Gallup and other American firms are using a small sample. And no one questions: How come I was not asked in the survey? But, just because the Kano are doing it small, we Pinoys need to follow, right? The issue remains, how do you exactly get the small sample such that it represents a huge number of voters?
Picture the whole surrealistic Republic into say levels of the provincial, municipal, barangays and even households. Each of these levels goes through the random population or selections, say at the provincial level, 10 out of the 86 provinces were selected. Then, all the levels go through the random selections all the way to the household levels. Thus, if you can picture it by now, there is a slim chance of being selected. However, it does not discount the fact that each member of the population has the equal chance of being selected. But then again, politics can play even in this systematic selection.
The only fall back we have, in the end, is to see the track records of these survey institutions and check on the integrity of their reports. SWS and Pulse Asia, the two most heavily quoted survey institutions have been consistent in their conduct of the surveys such that they have been conducting surveys even off the election sessions.
You have the choice: believe the survey reports or our grumbling politicians. Again, check their track records.
The remarks against surveys are on record. “I don’t want to use propaganda.” This was the stinging attack of Presidential candidate Dick Gordon against national surveys one or two weeks before the election. Among Dick Gordon’s many claims was that even if he tops the surveys, he would not use the surveys for his campaign. I thought Dick Gordon was joking, really. Not the part where he would top the surveys but the part where he called surveys as merely propaganda.
A week after the election, Dick Gordon offered his piece de resistance on surveys, claiming that “before it was just the money. These days, the new enemy is the survey. There was no good that came out of the surveys except that they were used as a propaganda weapon by those who paid for them”.
Dick Gordon’s bravados, however, were not without merits. For one, surveys do not exist in a vacuum. In other words, bayad sila (paid) by individuals and institutions. The Social Weather Station (SWS), one of the two most prominently used survey institutions by media (Pulse Asia being the other one) for tracking down and generating news on the presidential election identifies the paying institutions for their surveys. You can check SWS website (www.sws.org.ph) to confirm this.
Moreover, one has to put the equation of Philippine politics and governance (so, what’s new ha?), or the kind of politics and governance we have. The brand is simply family affair, and generating surveys are no exceptions. This was the message of Loren Legarda’s attacks on SWS’s survey a week or two before the election. Legarda identified names of the relatives supposedly connected to Mar Roxas who was then leading the vice-presidential survey. Bottom line, survey companies, like any major corporate structures in the Philippines, are bound to be run by a relative of a politician (cousins, uncles, ninong sa kasal, and God forbids, the mistress and lovers). But then again, you can dismiss Legarda’s gripes as another coming from a sour loser.
But whether we take Gordon’s or Legarda’s tirades on surveys as serious or dismiss them as ordinary ranting of losing candidates, the surveys are here to stay. There are some serious accusations though, serious because they involve an attack on the supposed science and less on politics, in the conduct of surveys. Most prominent on this is the number game. The range of survey respondents, more commonly called in the academe as samples, range from a thousand or two. One DZRH commentator asked: How can a 1,000 or 3,000 samples represent the whole country?
The heart of this question, as any academician in his/her right brain functioning, will easily answer: random sampling. There is nothing complicated in the idea of random sampling. It simply means that every member of a group (in our case, the Filipino voters) has an equal chance of being selected. The assumption comes into play. Not all voters will be asked. Thus, the accusations of some political supporters that how come they were not asked in the surveys is simply without substance, precisely because not all voters will be asked.
Without question, the only way to have a 100% surety of the survey is to ask the 50 or so million Filipino voters. Or, logic dictates that the larger the number of respondents or survey participants, the higher the level of certainty, or what the academicians call margin of error. But among those who have conducted actual surveys, getting the 100% population is suicidal. Better still, increasing the number of representation is simply cost-ineffective. Like everything else, the survey is also subject to monetary constraints.
Outside of our surrealistic Republic, survey institutions, such as the Gallup and other American firms are using a small sample. And no one questions: How come I was not asked in the survey? But, just because the Kano are doing it small, we Pinoys need to follow, right? The issue remains, how do you exactly get the small sample such that it represents a huge number of voters?
Picture the whole surrealistic Republic into say levels of the provincial, municipal, barangays and even households. Each of these levels goes through the random population or selections, say at the provincial level, 10 out of the 86 provinces were selected. Then, all the levels go through the random selections all the way to the household levels. Thus, if you can picture it by now, there is a slim chance of being selected. However, it does not discount the fact that each member of the population has the equal chance of being selected. But then again, politics can play even in this systematic selection.
The only fall back we have, in the end, is to see the track records of these survey institutions and check on the integrity of their reports. SWS and Pulse Asia, the two most heavily quoted survey institutions have been consistent in their conduct of the surveys such that they have been conducting surveys even off the election sessions.
You have the choice: believe the survey reports or our grumbling politicians. Again, check their track records.
