Survey takeaways

Common analyses in our commentariat class is that surveys on presidential frontrunners are only meaningful to the present moment but never to the future.

In other words, many in our commentariat class admit that presidential and electoral surveys do not predict or forecast anything, even if they have great fun pretending they do.

Perhaps the fun part is their sheepish nod to the Filipino’s obvious love of gambling, where the survey numbers make up the odds in a horse race.

So, interpreting survey numbers as odds is essentially gambling on how a forthcoming exciting electoral race will turn out — of where to place your bets as the long brutal campaign for the presidency in 2028 starts.

Once the gambling angle is admitted, we quickly see that Pulse Asia’s presidential preferences survey released last Monday shows where the bets are going.

Unlike previous surveys, Pulse Asia’s latest trumpeted that in a one-on-one matchup Senator Raffy Tulfo is neck-and-neck with perceived frontrunner Vice President Sara Duterte, while former vice president Leni Robredo is catching up to the Veep.

Immediately, the strong leaps of the Veep’s presumptive challengers all but lead to one undeniable conclusion as one observer aptly put it: “It’s saying the race Sara thought she had locked up isn’t.”

Put another way, the race for Mr. Marcos Jr.’s successor is only now opening up, prompting gambling gurus — political operators — to advise their clients to hedge their bets.

Now all that mad scramble — which in political lore is about making sure the money contributed and the influence gained would further one’s financial interest or political power — basically leaves other interpretations as footnotes.

But, depending on your interests and feelings about our wild and wooly society, economy and politics, your personal honest reaction to the survey isn’t necessarily a mere footnote.

Your personal reaction as a citizen is as valid and legitimate as the cacophony of the professional political and economic analysts, the reckless extortionist social media bloggers and the hoary politicos.

You and scores of other Filipinos though have got to cut through all the engineered noise and deliberate misinformation.

Now, on my part, cutting through all the noise is one of the core responsibilities of the trade of responsible journalism, of where I happen to find myself.

Anyway, what immediately jumps out in the latest Pulse Asia survey to a journalist like me is the fact that people nowadays are showing their demand for dramatic changes in how to safely navigate and process information and opinions, particularly amid the survey’s pronounced finding that people realize that corruption makes everything worse.

Freely admitting that digital-based technologies have all but radically changed journalism as well as the public for the worse, the latest survey shows practicing journalists how to properly respond to this new challenge.

In fact, scrutinizing details of the latest Pulse Asia survey highlights the fact that journalists can’t remain complicit with or lend themselves to digitally driven propaganda and misinformation operations.

If before it appeared the Filipino consumed political news digitally like so many of his fellow citizens, absorbing daily doses of outrage on social media, metabolizing the anger, and projecting the same out into the world, this is not necessarily the case now.

The same targeted citizens are now desperately signaling they want facts and not fiction to remain healthy, which only the practice of responsible journalism provides.