Villar Now Leads Aquino by 2% in The CENTER Survey
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Nacionalista Party (NP) standard-bearer Sen. Manny Villar continues to gain strength as he has now
overtaken erstwhile leader, Liberal Party (LP) presidential bet Sen. Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III in the latest
survey of The Issues and Advocacy Center (The CENTER).
In that survey, conducted March 3-10, 2010, Villar got 28 percent to Aquino's 26 percent.
Ed M. Malay, director of The Center, said the results of the latest nationwide survey also reinforces the view
that the coming May 10, 2010 elections is going to be a media-driven campaign with both broadcast and
print media emerging as the most preferred medium employed by national candidates to put their respective
political agenda across.
In that survey conducted among 2,400 respondents nationwide, the results show that the decision-making
process of Filipino voters can be enhanced and influenced by the outpouring of information supplied by the
national candidates and generated by the various forms of media, television in particular.
The Center also said it continues to rely on the multi-stage probability sampling method employing
face-to-face interviews with a skip interval method of four to five houses to obviate any possible bias in the
responses adding that its survey has a + 2.8% margin of error and a confidence level of 95%.
Malay said the systematic implementation of astroturfing has allowed Sen.Villar to overtake erstwhile
frontrunner Aquino.
The Center said the survey only showed the general perception that the campaign for the top national
positions in the May 10, 2010, polls will be media-driven.
This scenario is seen in the results of the latest nationwide pre-poll survey of The Issues and Advocacy
Center (The CENTER) which showed Villar making use of what is known in the media industry as
"astroturfing." This is a strategy, in which the main activity is simply centered on flooding the three major
media platforms - print, television and radio - with advertising and infomercial placements.
In addition, The Center said there is a marked deviation from the standards of the previous political
campaigns in the past elections and this is the systematic employment of the so-called SMS (short
messaging system) blast system which allows political parties and or candidates which can afford the use
of such systems to reach as wide an audience with little effort.
Malay said, however, that the use of the SMS blast which allows political parties and or candidates to send
text messages to as many as 22 million cellular mobile numbers of the three major wireless
telecommunication providers has turned into a vicious information campaign in that the messages have not
only become libelous to some extent but it has turned this 2010 polls into a campaign that promotes black
propaganda.
Malay said The Center survey for the period in review shows that Sen. Manny Villar's statistics has actually
remained the same at 28% as in their last February 2010 pre-poll survey. Villar rising to the lead in the
pre-poll survey ratings became possible with the dramatic decline in the ratings of erstwhile frontrunner Sen.
Benigno Simeon 'Noynoy' Aquino who now stands at 26%. # # #
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