Attacks barely dent Marcos’ support base – Pulse Asia

MANILA, Philippines — The attacks hurled at presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. by his rivals appeared to have barely dented the solid support for the former senator, based on the latest pre-election survey of Pulse Asia, with just about a month left before the May 9 polls.

Pulse Asia president Ronald Holmes and research director Ana Tabunda both said the four-point drop in Marcos’ preferential rating – from 60 percent in February to 56 percent in March – was “not significant” to indicate any change in his base of supporters.

In an interview with CNN Philippines, Holmes stressed that the slight drop in Marcos’ voters’ preference was merely “marginal and not statistically significant.”

“That’s what we apply when we call something a change – it should be beyond the margin of error because if it’s within the margin of error, the change can be explained by the normal sampling in cross-sectional service,” he explained.

The nationwide survey of Pulse Asia had a margin of error of plus or minus two percent at the 95 percent confidence level, while subnational estimates for each of the geographic areas covered in the survey (i.e., Metro Manila, rest of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao) have a plus or minus four percent error margin, also at 95 percent confidence level.

In a separate interview, Tabunda made the same observation based on comparison of Marcos’ numbers.

“His (Marcos) decline is not significant nationwide,” she told ANC.

Tabunda noted that the nine-point increase of Marcos’ rival, Vice President Leni Robredo, is also not enough to catch up in the presidential race if such trend is maintained in the last month before the polls.

“No (she can’t catch up) because the increase is not enough… It’s difficult to say but there has to be a larger decline in the voter preference and larger increases in Robredo’s preference votes for her to be able to catch up,” she pointed out.

Marcos and Robredo, she said, were still separated by 32 percentage points.

“She really has to have a larger increase because the gap right now is 32 percentage points. That means, just to be statistically tied, the voter preference for Leni Robredo has to increase by 16 percentage points at least. And the voter preference for BBM has to decline by 16 percentage points at least just for the two of them to be statistically tied,” she explained in an interview with One PH.

Based on the recent Pulse Asia survey released Wednesday, covering the period of March 17 to 21, Marcos remained on top, scoring 56 percent voter preference.

A distant second was Leni Robredo with 24 percent while Isko Moreno Damagoso scored eight percent at third. Senators Manny Pacquiao and Panfilo Lacson garnered six percent and two percent, respectively.

Meanwhile, Marcos and vice presidential candidate Sara Duterte are set to woo voters in Samar and Leyte provinces in a two-day campaign leg starting today. The duo will kick off their campaign in the Waray region with a rally in Catarman and Borongan towns today before moving to the Samar provincial capitol grounds in Catbalogan City and Biliran in the afternoon.

Tomorrow, they will campaign in Maasin and Baybay cities in the morning and in Ormoc and Tacloban cities in the afternoon.