February 27, 2025
Manila – Public opinion survey plays a role in democracy. They are tools for data collection that provide snapshots of public transient views. However, some surveys can be troubled by mistakes, including bias against bias, loading questions, answers and interviewer bias, and lower response rates.
The problem with pre-election polls has become even worse, with the main issue being the impact of the investigation on the conditions on voters.
Article 5.1 of the Fair Elections Act defines an election survey as “a measure and perception of the popularization, qualifications, platform or public discussion of voters, including public discussions related to elections, including voters’ preferences for candidates or issues of discussion of candidates or public discussion during the campaign.”
As voters often lack sufficient information or have easy access to the candidate’s background and records, survey respondents cannot easily make informed choices. At best, election surveys are a match of popularity – anyone with a name recall will prevail.
“Public opinion is an illusory commodity. Trying to measure it … will reveal inconsistencies and changes.” It added: “Citizens use information shortcuts when making decisions on the political stage, which are new and personal information that dispels old and impersonal.
Trend effect
As the public lacks a fixed preference on many issues, political actors are motivated to provide these shortcuts in ways that may expand on themselves and the policies they advocate” (“Popular and Public Opinion: Good, Bad and Ugly and Ugly”, 06/01/03).
The trend effect causes the results to be investigated based on the accuracy of their results. On the so-called Magic 12 pre-election investigation list, candidates for senators can increase their visibility by seemingly winning.
This is to sacrifice those who are outside the winning circle all year round, not because of their lack of ability or a genuine desire for public service, but because they are unknown or less popular.
Especially problematic are non-scientific election surveys conducted by night-by-night voting companies, even traditional media and social media video blogs and influencers.
A study published in the Journal of International Public Opinion Research in 2020 shows that the trend effects of Internet polls, especially those using convenient samples or easily accessible Internet polls, assumes that “popular choices become more popular due to polls.”
Election crimes
The study found that seeing results from pre-election polls “raise votes for most options by 7%. The study found that such percentages may be crucial in close elections, with the trend effect becoming larger in less polarization issues. It can be argued that undecided voters are most vulnerable to the trend effects of the survey.
Therefore, the Election Commission (COMELEC) deserves credit for building muscle by adjusting the publication of the survey, resulting in a mid-term poll on May 12. Comelec en banc now classifies the following elections as election crimes: failure to conduct pre-checks of investigation commands; dissemination of false investigations; non-disclosure of the sponsors and details of the investigation until the results are broadcast or published online, and no comprehensive reports are made.
Comelec's new policy on investigative publications (if stereotyped) is that power over elections affects election power without sufficient information about candidates. According to the national movement for free national elections, it is also a bastion against the spread of false information, especially the skewed findings, “often used on social media, or even fake news media to manipulate voters’ perceptions.”
Live debate
Voters don’t have to invest too much premium on surveys, but have to have better information about aspiring people in public office. Comelec should promote voter education by working with a variety of election supervisors, academia, media organizations and civil society groups that have a platform to help the public scrutinize candidates, their own and their qualifications.
The main part of voter education is the mandatory participation of candidates in media debates. Live debates are crucial to the election process as they provide stable verifiable information to deal with the widespread election propaganda and fake news on social media, which has become a new electoral battlefield.
Comelec should provide these debates for all candidates in order to provide voters with a venue to understand their candidates’ platform and stand on the issue, and reduce the harmful effects of Echo Chambers and confirm the bias generated by social media.
