Leni Robredo’s trek to the vice president position : part 1

thank you to blogwatch.ph (@blogwatchdotph) for inviting us to sit in during the session with LP’s vice presidentiable Leni Robredo.

there is something to be said about Leni Robredo, a vice presidentiable who gives her time to a group of bloggers and netizens to talk about issues and allow them to know who she is as a candidate and as a person.

and Leni Robredo needs the exposure. last october 19, 2015, we wrote in this blog (tittle : 2 things Leni Robredo should do to win) that to win, she needs to address her low awareness on a national level. Robredo is known in Naga and to a certain degree in Metro Manila. but with her experience and work concentrated on a local level at Naga, she is hardly known nationally specially when compared to her competitors in the vice-presidential race who are all nationally elected senators. they all have a national political base and are known on a national level.

this meeting with the blogwatch.ph will help address the need we identified in October 2015.

excerpts:

survey results notwithstanding, Robredo has 2 huge but very basic marketing things that she needs to do to win:

1. address low awareness on a national level – robredo may be known in here hometown and to some degree in Metro Manila but she is hardly known in the rest of the country. that is a key issue as the position she is running for is national in scope, she needs the rest of the country to know who she is.
2. what is the Leni Robredo brand equity or brand positioning? together with the issue of low awareness, Robredo’s other big problem and this can be much bigger than the first is nobody knows what she stands for. what is her brand equity or brand positioning of Robredo?

read: https://2010presidentiables.wordpress.com/2015/10/19/2-things-leni-robredo-should-do-to-win/

since October, Robredo has gone to other parts of the country to get to know the people and to allow the people to know her. she has aired some advertising which based on the monitoring was about P91M in 2015 and places her 11th highest ad spender among the national candidates and 3rd highest among vice-presidentiables. the ad spending may be not much, but it is a move in the right direction.

what is interesting is that during the blogwatch.ph discussion, she admitted she was surprised by the amount of money spent on her TV ads. she said she did not have money to spend for the ads and the money for sure did not come from her. her party, the LP had spent for the ads. according to her, senator bam aquino is the one managing her campaign and would know the details of the ad spending.

honestly, we do not remember what ad she aired during that time. but i remember it was not a remarkable ad. it was forgettable and too run of the mill.

in a scenario where there is very low brand awareness, ads like the one she aired, boring it may be, is a good thing. the ad for sure will add awareness and build some brand equity for her.

however, for whatever brand equity she has gotten from the ads, it is on shaky grounds as a non-remarkable ad that builds an equity means the equity is vulnerable to erosion specially when the other vice presidential candidates start airing their own ads during the campaign  period which started just a few days ago.

the survey results recently released show that Robredo’s campaign is doing very well. it also supports the points we raised on what Robredo needs to win the election – increase awareness and a brand equity definition.

a few days ago, we tweeted that Robredo should aim to get more interviews to get media exposure, for more people to hear and see her. in the times that we have seen her during interviews, we were continually and exponentially  impressed by her. we thought more voters getting this experience, the more she gains supporters.

the survey results are very good for Robredo. she was on a surge in the latest mid-December poll from SWS. from a very low 7% in September 2014, she gained a +16% points in December 2015, to 19% from 3%. more importantly her ranking jumped to a tie at 2nd with Marcos coming from 5th in September.

the surge in the surveys may have been driven  by the announcement of her candidacy and the endorsement from president Noynoy Aquino and the LP presidentiable Mar Roxas and the media attention given to her after the announcement. in other words, Robredo generated awareness and started to define her brand equity.

her ratings in the survey has defined her as competitive even when faced with incumbent senators who already have a national standing.

the question is can she sustain this upward trajectory in the coming weeks?

~~~ more to follow ~~~

 

 

 

 

 

supporters abandon Jejomar Binay in mass exodus

there is no other way to describe what has been happening to presidentiable Jejomar Binay and his presidential campaign – his supporters are abandoning him in what can only be called a mass exodus. this is the PDI headline from the most recent survey from Pulse Asia:

this is a survey from Pulse Asia on the performance and trust rating of Binay as vice-president. this survey asks the performance and trust ratings of the top officials in the government from the president to the speaker of the house and senate to the chief justice. this is different from the election surveys that Pulse Asia (and SWS) have been conducting.

this survey asks respondents of their sentiments in the way Binay is performing his job as vice-president. people will be responding to that question based on what they think a vice president should be doing. Binay’s run for the president is not mentioned in the question that is being asked here.

the results were devastating for Binay – he took a free fall on trust and performance to his lowest level in the process losing a whopping-15% points from 58% to 43% of his approval rating on his performance of his job.

equally devastating is his trust ratings also nose dived by losing-18% points from 57% to 39%.

source : Philippine Daily Inquirer http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/727269/pulse-asia-binay-ratings-dive

those are very dramatic losses that will make any candidate or even a pollster shudder in fear. this means that on this aspect of Binay’s political life, people are very disappointed with him and that he is being abandoned by his supporters. the vice-president position is a very easy position to fulfill – because of the nature of the job, there are very little things to do unlike say the president or even the cabinet secretaries. because of the ease, the vice president in most surveys typically gets a much higher performance and trust rating than the president.

for Jejomar Binay to get a lower rating than Aquino in this survey says a lot about the huge disappointment that people have on Binay.

in a newspaper report, Binay questions the credibility of this survey by saying he has already resigned his cabinet posts when the survey was conducted, wondering what it was the respondents were rating him for his performance and trust.

Binay is mistaken and raises an irrelevant issue – the survey had asked the respondents on his performance and trust as vice president of the country, not as any of the cabinet post he has occupied and resigned from. respondents are measuring him on the basis of what the respondents think is the job and function of the vice president. as vice-president of the country, the respondents have seen his performance and trust dramatically drop.

in recent surveys released previous to this, Binay’s ratings have shown his declining ratings continue to drop. not only that, his ranking has changed from a high 2nd to either being tied by Roxas at 2nd or falling to 3rd/4th position. the ratings of mar roxas, the LP and admin standard bearer has seen his ratings surge up both in terms of numbers and position where he used to be a far 4th to now a tie at 2nd (posted here in this blog).

the questions asked of the respondents here were point blank – who would they elect as president if the elections were held at the time of the survey and who they think is a good leader to replace Aquino as president.

Binay getting declining numbers on these different surveys says a large part of Binay’s supporters are abandoning Binay in a mass exodus. they are abandoning Binay based on different dimensions of the candidate as Binay – on trust and performance as VP, as a good leader to replace Aquino and as presidential candidate. Binay is being looked at from different dimensions by the voters and in all aspects they no longer see Binay as fit.

on their own these are already dramatic and impressive declines. put that further into context, Binay used to be the top on all the surveys just a few months ago. he was all alone on top with no one even close to challenge him. Binay’s standing started to erode when alleged charges of corruption and plunder were revealed at the senate hearings. at the height of the weekly hearings, when it became vey apparent that Binay was mired in multiple corruption charges, Grace Poe a neophyte senator surged up in the surveys .

the voters saw Binay as the evil one based on the alleged charges while they saw Poe as good in an election that quickly got into a question of an election of Good vs Evil.

we have said this before. Binay should recognize what is happening to his candidacy, these survey numbers are real and representing real sentiments. the sentiments are astoundingly consistent from many dimensions. for him to change his fortunes, he needs to wear big boy pants and face the charges that have been made against him. until he does that, the declining trend will not change and continue until the actual 2016 election.

does binay have big boy pants?

 

 

 

 

 

Roxas surges up, jumps from far 4th to tie declining Binay at 2nd – Pulse Asia

Latest presidentiable poll from Pulse Asia shows a few things worth metnioning:

• Mar Roxas;s ratings surged in September to 18% from the previous 10%. that is an amazing +8% almost doubling his rating
• Roxas’ position jumped from a far fourth to now a statistical tie at 2nd with Binay with just a difference of 3% points. the survey has a margin error of +/- 3% points
• Roxas overtook Duterte who had lost ratings
• the gaps among the three, Poe, Binay and Roxas are now much closer in ratings than before
• of the top three only Roxas increased his ratings (+8% points) while not Poe (-3% points) and Binay (-1% points) deteriorated
• in fact among the top 8 politicians, only Roxas increased his ratings while the rest declined

just like the SWS survey, this Pulse Asia survey was conducted first week of September and the positive impact on Roxas’ ratings surge was president Aquino’s endorsement of Mar Roxas and Roxas owning and promising to continue Daang Matuwid. Daang Matuwid was what got Aquino to win the election by a landslide and has become the cornerstone of Aquino’s governance.

we are surprised at the power of Aquino’s endorsement and “Daang Matuwid”. we thought that would help but both have exceeded our expectations.

the value of Aquino’s endorsement come from the fact that Aquino is the most popular president of the country. and endorsement from him will help whoever candidate he endorses. Poe and Binay knew that and that is why both wanted Aquino’s endorsement. even Binay who is against Aquino had said so which on its own is a weird thing for him to say but he did.

Daang Matuwid’s power comes from the various high profile corruption cases that have been in the headlines for many months during the Aquino administration. that started with chief justice Corona who was impeached, Janet Napoles with her PDAF scam and high profile senators Enrile, Revilla and Estrada who are all in jail on corruption and plunder charges in connection with Napoles’ PDAF Scam.

aside from them. even vice president Jejomar Binay is embroiled in corruption and plunder charges that was in full media display for many months during the senate hearings. Binay being one of the presidentiables involved in corruption and plunder, the issue of corruption which Daang Matuwid is fighting has been highlighted this election season.

the country was aghast and nearly gave a collective puke every time the string of corruption charges were being revealed at the senate. there were many and each new alleged charge seem to be greater and more puke worthy than the last one. it was not lost on the people that Jejomar Binay was no ordinary government official, Binay as vice president  is  the second most powerful and most important elected government official in the country.

the country has in its midst the second most powerful and most important elected public official on whom alleged charges were being made that he was seemingly dirty from top to bottom and starting from the time he took public office in Makati allegedly including his family members from his wife to his children.

that was the scenario when Grace Poe came into the picture. Grace Poe was performing credibly in the senate hearings she participated in and the interviews she gave to media. she appeared to the people as a sensible, fair and most importantly clean elected government official.

as more of the alleged charges against Binay came to light and none of them answered and Binay and his spokespersons mishandling the situation, Grace Poe emerged as the exact opposite to what Binay stood for in the minds of people. that is the reason why Poe surged in the polls and took over the lead from Binay while Binay continued on his downward spiral.

Roxas at the time was just doing his job at DILG, hardly talking and not confirming his plans for the 2016 election. it is that reason why Roxas did not factor in the surveys during that particular time.

with Binay marred with alleged multi million and serial charges of corruption he was juxtaposed  against Poe who was squeaky clean. all of a sudden the 2016 election became an election about Good vs. Evil.

Poe being a woman who spoke in a measured and calm tone, with little make up, dressed casually almost always was directly compared to Binay a male whom the public pictured based on the numerous corruption power point presentations being made at the senate hearing.

it was the classic Good vs Evil comparison.

when looking at election polls, specially at the early stages of the election campaign, one should not just look at the actual rating numbers but equally important one should look for the trend. the trend is the one that will kill a candidate. the trend in many ways predict the future. in election polls, respondents are being asked of their sentiments and attitudes at that point in time that the survey is being taken. that attitude and sentiment ay change in succeeding survey points.  a trend describes the movement of sentiments or attitudes.

for the presidentiables once a trend is identified, that should demand some action from the presidentiable. a rising trend means whatever the presidentiable is doing is working in his favor, a declining trend means people are finding something wrong with the presidentiable. when that happens, the presidentiable need to change what he is doing or what he is saying so that the declining trend will first be arrested and then later on hopefully reversed.  for that to happen, the presidentiable need to do something different from whatever he is doing at the present time.

based on the polls as of this writing : poe is on the lead but trending flat; roxas is 2nd/3rd, an impressive climb and trending up while binay has decreased and continue to trend downwards.

are poe, roxas and binay listening to the trend?

 

 

 

 

Roxas catapults to #2, beats Binay, all behind Aquino’s endorsement and “Daang Matuwid”

latest SWS presidentiables poll for the 2016 election has put a dazzling surprise – Mar Roxas an erstwhile low 3rd in the previous survey has jumped to 2nd place and in the process pushing down Jejomar Binay to 3rd.

not only the improvement in ranking was the big surprise, the numbers are amazing, from the previous poll putting roxas at 21%, roxas catapulted to 39%, a giant leap of +18%.

binay who used to be 2nd now sits at 35%, almost the same as the previous poll at 34%. the 1% point difference is not statistically significant.

source : http://www.sws.org.ph

however, roxas’ lead over binay, +4% points is statistically significant from binay with the +/- 3% points margin of error.

what happened? what caused the phenomenal increase in rating and standing of mar roxas?

we think what drove the impressive increase is the endorsement of president aquino of roxas’ candidacy to the presidency. the SWS survey was conducted  september 2 to 5 which was very close to the announcement of Aquino’s endorsement of Roxas that happened on july 31, 2015 at club filipino. it was a big event as it got full media coverage and was in the news that evening and succeeding days. it has been highly speculated that aquino will endorse roxas, the actual announcement was highly anticipated by everyone.

aquino is the country’s most popular president. no other president was able to gain the kind of very high ratings that aquino has gotten. this high level began at the start of his presidency and was continued on through the years. even aquino’s low ratings were much higher than arroyo’s ratings which almost always stayed on the negative. arroyo is one of the country’s most unpopular president while aquino is the country’s most popular president.

the incumbent president’s endorsement seem to have a lot of power, negative or positive,  in philippine politics.

president arroyo endorsed gibo teodoro but since arroyo was one of the country’s most unpopular president, that endorsement became a kiss of death for teodoro.

cory aquino’s endorsement of fidel ramos we think was one of the reasons ramos got elected. cory was and is one of the country’s most popular and beloved presidents. today, cory is considered a hero by many.

aside from aquino’s endorsement, we think the other driver for roxas’ surge in the polls is “daang matuwid”. daang matuwid was the campaign platform of noynoy aquino when he ran for the presidency, one that he won on a landslide. aside from the 2010 campaign, this was also used by aquino as central and often the headline of aquino’s governance.

right after the endorsement of aquino, roxas immediately proclaimed that he will continue “daang matuwid” and in fact Roxas ran TV ads on “daang matuwid” one day after he was endorsed by aquino.  in speeches aquino identified roxas as the person who he thinks will continue and has the competence to continue “daang matuwid”.

corruption in government which daang matuwid is going against appear to continue to be a top issue among voters. it also helps one of the key aspirants for the presidency is being alleged as a serial and multiple corrupt government official, vp jejomar binay. binay to this day has not answered or made  an effort to dispel the alleged charges of corruption.

this is turn is perhaps the reason why binay has been sliding in the polls. binay’s drop to third is the second for binay. he used to be at the top of the polls before the alleged corruption charges were revealed at the senate,

we had underestimated the power of president aquino as endorser and the idea of “daang matuwid”. we expected improvements but we dd not see it happening in this grand scale.

the momentum is with roxas. poe’s momentum has been stopped and binay may have stabilized. a continuing surge by roxas and a decline in base support for poe and binay can win him the presidency.

 

 

 

Mar Roxas to get boost from President Aquino’s rising popularity

Aquino satisfaction best since Q1 2014

PUBLIC SATISFACTION with President Benigno S. C. Aquino III hit its highest point in one-and-a-half years this quarter, fueled by significant improvements in most geographical areas except Mindanao and across socioeconomic classes except ABC, according to results of the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey.

read more here : http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?section=TopStory&title=aquino-satisfaction-best-since-q1-2014&id=115452

latest poll shows president aquino’s net satisfaction rating is on the rise, highest since Q1 2014 according to SWS as published at Business World. this confirms once again that president aquino is the country’s most popular president.

this rise in satisfaction rating comes at a great time for Mar Roxas who recently had announced he is running for president under the LP. this is a benefit to Roxas as Aquino has endorsed Roxas’ run for the presidency.

Roxas has declared he is ready for the presidency and accepts the challenge of continuing Aquino’s “daang matuwid” governance and the platform by which aquino won the election by a landslide.

the “daang matuwid” and aquino’s rising popularity is in contrast to the continuing unanswered graft and corruption charges against Roxas’ main rival for the presidency VP Jejomar Binay.

Roxas is a far third in the latest polls although he has recovered significantly in the latest poll from the previous. Aquino’s endorsement of Roxas may give Roxas the push to challenge the leader Poe and the previous leader Binay. Poe now leads the polls, followed by Binay and Roxas at third.

the latest presdientiables surveys will be released soon, lets see how this all plays out for Roxas.

VP Jejomar Binay’s net satisfaction rating takes a steep dizzying decline

• looking at the chart above, VP Binay’s net satisfaction rating suffers another decline
• the chart is now on a dizzying decline
• it is now at +44 (chart below) from a high of +76 in June 2013. that is a -32% point erosion
• since March 2014, his net satisfaction ratings have eroded a whopping -29% points
• since March 2014. his net satisfaction ratings has gone done by -6%points to June from March; -15% points to September from June and -10% points to December from September

source : http://www.sws.org.ph/

 

Binayfication strategy is not working – change or explode in flames on the way down

Binayfication is the strategy employed by VP Binay and the rest of the family on the current allegations and charges hounding them individually and collectively as a family. Binayfication is about ignoring and not answering the allegations and charges of corruption being revealed and multiplying at the committee hearings led by Senators Cayetano, Pimentel and Trillanes. It is about ignoring and not answering them and instead introducing new issues and points that are totally unrelated to the charges and allegations with the intent of diverting the attention of the people.

these survey results from both Pulse Asia and SWS says it all, quite emphatically how Binayfication has failed as a strategy:

sources : http://www.sws.org.ph/ and http://pulseasia.ph/

all the survey results, Pulse Asia’s trust and performance ratings and SWS satisfaction ratings of jojo binay as a vice president has plummeted in September 2014 from previous periods of June and March 2014. the changes from September to June are all dramatic and statistically significant – the drops are -15% points. comparing the September numbers to one more quarter before that, from March 2014, the drops are even more devastating, they increase from a middle double-digit number to now -20% in most cases.

not only that, the drops as the Pulse Asia survey shows are across the board, across all regions and across all socio-eco classes. in other words, the vote of disapproval is from everyone in all places in the country. that is massive decline in any survey, political or even in marketing.

that tells us whatever it is the Binay camp are doing, they are not working and is not helping the cause of VP Binay for his 2016 presidential aspirations. in marketing, actions and strategies are measured and judged by numbers, by results. the actual business numbers and results equivocally tell us whether they are working or not. numbers that go up simply say they are working and numbers that are down says they are not working. whatever the numbers are, you base your next step on those. good numbers says continue whatever you are doing while bad numbers says stop whatever you are doing and change course.

for the past weeks, all that the Binay camp have been doing is Binayfication. the numbers are out and what they are saying is that Binayfication is not working . the smart strategist will make a move to change strategies. but that does not seem to be what they will do. so far, all they have been doing is the same thing. doing the same thing will give the same results. if these initial results is the beginning of a trend, Binay is set to lose the 2016 election.

—

credit goes to sargo for the term “Binayfication”. it is being used with permission. 

 

don’t take SWS yolanda survey on aquino’s “satisfaction performance” seriously – defective design

i was very surprised when media carried this news on the latest SWS survey results that said super typhoon yolanda victims themselves gave president aquino a “very good” performance satisfaction rating.

SWS: PNoy gets ‘very good’ satisfaction ratings from Yolanda victims

Although he has received criticism from some parties for his administration’s response to super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan), President Benigno Aquino III got “very good” satisfaction marks from victims of the typhoon, according to a survey by Social Weather Stations.

SWS said this was the finding of its survey last Dec. 11 to 16, where Yolanda victims – which comprised 13 percent of Filipino families – gave Aquino a “very good” +54 net satisfaction rating.

“The December 2013 survey found higher satisfaction ratings for President Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III among victims of Yolanda compared to those who were not victimized by the super typhoon,” the survey said.

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/345123/news/nation/sws-pnoy-gets-very-good-satisfaction-ratings-from-yolanda-victims\

essentially the same story was reported by other media outlets. reading the news stories alone, i immediately had a different reaction to the survey results which i tweeted (@wawam). will talk about this next. 

of course malacanang jumped on the “good news”.

Palace ecstatic over Aquino’s ‘very good’ satisfaction rating

MANILA, Philippines— Malacañang  gave itself a pat on the back on Thursday after the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey showed that Super Typhoon “Yolanda” victims were satisfied with the performance of President Benigno Aquino III during and after its devastation.

“It is gratifying that those who suffered greatly appreciate what their President and their government have done to ease their pain and alleviate their plight despite the shortcomings and challenges still being hurdled,” Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. said Thursday in a press briefing.

Read more: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/568259/palace-ecstatic-over-aquino-very-good-satisfaction-rating#ixzz2rTD2g5nU
Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

just based on the survey results published in media, i thought something was not right about the survey which i tweeted:

1. the respondent base for yolanda victims appeared to have been just extrapolated, not a stand alone respondent base. it appeared to me SWS re-looked at the survey results and counted the results of those who live in the yolanda areas and tabulated these results. i felt SWS did not actually conduct a separate survey to ask the respondents these questions but just looked at the survey results of an already finished survey
2.  coming from the above, i thought the question asked was a general “performance satisfaction” of president  aquino and not specific to aquino’s performance on the yolanda relief efforts. it is very possible that respondents will give very different answers to these questions.

last january 22, SWS posted the specifics of the survey results : i was both right and wrong on the point #1 and was right on point #2. conclusion remains – let us not take these results seriously, the results are what we call in research “soft results”.

i was wrong on point #1 because SWS did not just extrapolate the answers of those living in the yolanda areas what they did was they actually asked the respondents if they were affected by the yolanda.

there could have been 2 ways to extrapolate – 1 is by just applying the % of  respondents living in the yolanda areas to the total results of the total visayas results (a very wrong thing to do) or look at the respondent answer sheets and count the answers of those declaring their address to be in yolanda areas. none of these were done. what they did was they asked a direct question.

i was right in the sense that SWS did not conduct a separate and stand alone survey among those living in the yolanda areas. this should have been the cleanest way to do it. you get an actual sample size in the areas themselves.

since SWS just asked the question among respondents if they were affected by yolanda, this brings up two more questions – is the sample size of 13% enough to read the results and how accurate is it to say that these respondents actually “lived in yolanda areas” when these were just “claimed”.

on the point #2, i was proven right.

the question was a generic performance satisfaction question – “satisfied or dissatisfied in performance as president of the philippines”  and not specific to the performance of the president on post yolanda relief efforts.

the specific “performance on yolanda efforts” can get a very different answer from the generic “performance as president of the philippines”. the first zeroes in on yolanda while the second one includes everything about the presidency and the country in general.

for example, if we ask our spouse, we could be a “very good husband/wife”  as a whole but a “very poor sex partner” in a specific component of marriage.

we do not know why SWS released these survey results and how media plus malacanang take these results when the survey design is critically flawed.

both SWS and Pulse Asia surveys hit 100% match with official senatoriables 2013 election Comelec results

there is no other way to describe it -both SWS and Pulse Asis senatoriables polls during the 2013 mid term election were impressive, both hit 100% in the list of senatoriables they had on their surveys compared to the top 12 on the final & official results from the Comelec.

SWS conducted their last survey for the senatoriables election May 2 to 3 and got these results compared to the actual and final Comelec results:

• 12 out of 12 in the poll came out as top 12 in the Comelec tally, 100% success rate
• 3 senatoriables, Escudero, K Pimentel and Honasan came in at exactly the ranking on the survey and the Comelec tally, a 25% match.
• 5 senatoriables, Legarda, AP Cayetano, N Binay, B Aquino and Trillanes came within 1 to 2 places off in the survey versus the final Comelec tally, a 42% match.
• adding the two numbers, 8 out of 12 or 67% came within a match to 2 places on the survey versus the Comelec tally
• only 4, Poe, S Angara, Ejercito and C Villar was off by more than 2 places from the final tally

Pulse Asia conducted its last survey for the senatoriables election on may 10 to 11. because of the nature of reporting and computation done by Pulse Asia on their poll results which were all expressed on a range, 11 out of 12 senatoriables matched the placements of the senatoriables to that of the Comelec tally. only 1 senatoriable, C. Villar was off.

the range means the Pulse Asia poll results were  showing a lot of ties or statistically insignificant differences from senatoriable to another.

what does this all mean?

it means SWS and Pulse Asia election polls are highly reliable and an excellent gauge of people’s sentiments on elections. there can be no better result than a 100% match rate and specially with a high number of matches coming in less than 2 places off.

that means the vetting of respondents done by the pollsters are excellent and are precisely representative of the voting population. it also means the random sampling done by these two polling agencies are to the point. most importantly, the sample size of 1,200 to 1,500 are good enough to be able to capture sentiments of voters on a national scale.

the above points, specially on the sample size have been the most questioned by non-believers of surveys, SWS and Pulse Asia in particular. not that the haters are able to present statistical arguments against the pollsters, but these have been incessantly raised by them. we have always said, those who raise them are those who are not winning in the polls thus having a skewed agenda. the excellent match up results proves the counter argument correct.

last point on what this means – it will be wise for election candidates in the future to subscribe and pay attention to the SWS and Pulse Asia election polls.

twitter followers of 2013 Senatoriables – how many are real, how many are fake?

we came across an interesting website on twitter the other day (courtesy of @Simply_Clinton) – twitter audit (http://www.twitteraudit.com/). the website analyses a twitter account’s followers and determines what portion are “real” followers and what is “fake”.

we assume “real” followers are other twitter accounts with individual humans behind them that follow a twitter account. they are acquired over time who follows an account based on a match on interest, point of view, tweets that are simply interesting or where to get information from.

“fake” followers are bots (internet robots) who are added to the list of followers just to add numbers to the followers list. the thinking is that, the more followers have or the greater the number of followers, the more popular the twitter user/account is. we have all heard of a twitter following contest of some sort between the likes of justin bieber and lady gaga for example. that is the whole idea behind it.

we are guessing someone having a bigger number of followers will feel important or encourage others to follow the person.

apparently, there are internet services from whom you can buy twitter followers. social media practitioners apparently do this all the time for their clients. when you hire a social media practitioner, adding or padding your follower list is one of the things they do for you.

with this in mind, we ran some 2013 senatoriables twitter accounts to find out what is the ratio of “real” vs “fake” twitter followers they have on their accounts.

we do not know if these politicians actually “bought” followers and we are not even giving an opinion on it. maybe they are all “real” followers and that the twitteraudit.com is wrong or giving us bad data or they have a large number of twitter followers whose accounts have become dormant for a long time. these things happen. and we really do not know how accurate or reliable twitteraudit.com is.

take these with a grain  salt, decide on your own what they mean.

for good measure, we also put here our own (@wawam) twitter audit and other politicians who are active on twitter. looking at the other audit results will give you a better gauge of what the data all mean for the rest.

   

head to head comparison SWS vs Pulse Asia February 2013 Senatoriables Polls

the good news is that the country has two polling companies doing a great job of capturing the sentiments of voters – SWS (social weather station) and Pulse Asia. it also adds to it that they tend to conduct the polls at about the same time. with the respondent criteria about the same and survey timing very close to each other, comparing the two results is a very good thing to do.

surveys give the people a view, scientific and objective, of what others think about candidates and issues. it can help others shape or confirm their own views. in this complex world of ours, more information is always better.

for candidates and handlers of the candidates, it can be more than informational, it can be very instructive. they can use the results to re-shape, change directions or strengthen their winning strategies or fix and avoid their losing strategies.

but that is very much dependent on the skill sets of the candidates and their handlers on analyzing and understanding surveys. that is the first step.

the second and the more important step is formulating new strategies and plans based on the survey analysis and conclusions.

we are providing here a first step analysis of the  survey results. there are a few more steps on analysis that needs to be done and more steps at formulating action steps in strategy change and plans formulation. but those are for another day.

in the meantime….

data sources: Pulse Asia & SWS

• Pulse Asia : http://pulseasia.ph/
• SWS : http://www.sws.org.ph/

also read (click) :

• dramatic gains for aquino & poe, dramatic drops for trillanes, zubiri & enrile – pulse asia february 2013 senatoriables poll
• dramatic drops for UNA & dramatic increases for Team PNoy in february SWS sentatoriables survey

jv ejercito’s identity crisis, he is swimming in contradictions

an article on 2013 senatoriable jv ejercito caught our attention. (see below) the headline struck us like a baseball bat – it was a headline that had a contradiction in it. on one hand JV says he wants to be his own man but the lead in  the headline identified him as “estrada’s son”. it’s either you are estrada’s son or you are yourself, an ejercito.

contradictions from senatoriable jv ejercito? we were not surprised. over at twitter (@wawam), we have talked about the many other contradictions from ejercito, including the name change that ejercito had done for himself.

the first paragraph in the PDI article plainly states what it also found as a contradiction:

He likes to be known as his father’s son, yet senatorial candidate Joseph Victor “JV” Ejercito also says he wants to be his own man.

Read more: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/371355/estradas-son-jv-wants-to-be-his-own-man#ixzz2NCVc5Ibm

there were many more contradictions found in the article :

ejercito is very much swimming in contradictions in that article that it almost made us dizzy. at first we thought maybe the dizziness was caused by a poorly written news article. that has happened before. but after reading the article at least three times, we thought the dizziness was not being caused by poor newspaper article writing, it was ejercito himself that was causing it with the contradictions he was dishing out in rapid succession.

this is bad news for ejercito from a marketing and advertising standpoint – an identity crisis is always not  a good thing to have in winning election campaigns. before consumers or in this case voters make a choice, they need to first know who the candidate is. ejercito seem to be using two sets of names, estrada and ejercito in different occasions and media which may put voters confused and unable to pin down who exactly is ejercito.

this identity crisis on its own is bad news but pair that with swimming in contradictions and it can be well, drowning to death. ejercito is obviously unable to adequately explain or give a good reason for the change in name.

half of ejercito thinks the name change is a good thing while the other half thinks its a bad thing, hence he goes to one end to the other like a pendulum gone crazy. ejercito seems to have one of his foot step on the other in every explanation he gives. we find it strange that senatoriable ejercito gives both good and bad things in the change of his name in the same interview.

we think poor or weak brand identification is one of the key reasons why UNA senatoriables suffered dramatic losses in rank and rating in the last SWS senatoriables poll.

(read here : dramatic drops for UNA & dramatic increases for Team PNoy in february SWS sentatoriables survey)

is jv ejercito following in the footsteps of UNA?

(note : jv ejercito is one of the top losers in rank and rating in the last SWS senatoriables poll)

(note : knowing PDI editors, we think the contradictory headline was intentionally written by them.)

read in full here : http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/371355/estradas-son-jv-wants-to-be-his-own-man