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People now look at surveys as means for
“divining” the outcome of the coming elections, and this can be
construed as survey fetishism even in the Marxist sense. We put a
premium on surveys, because they have an aura of social science
about them particularly when directed by people trained in
statistics, economics, and political economy. Surveys are the
contemporary crystal balls, and in a country prone to “hula,”
people oftentimes engage in the game of who will be the winner, be
it in boxing or elections.
Former UP acting president
Enrique T. Virata, a PhD in math from John Hopkins, once tried to
interest me in a career in demographic studies. He was then involved
setting up the Population Commission. He treated me to a steak
dinner off West Avenue in the early 70s when the country seemed to
be on the eve of revolution to talk about population and statistics.
The latter subject elicited in me misgivings about my fitness in a
field involving numbers—having gotten less than respectable grades
in math subjects from grade school to college. One reason I majored
in literature.
I don’t know what Virata must
have seen in me—apart from being his “junior brod” in the
Upsilon and my having worked together with his son, Cesar (the prime
minister), in putting out the senior yearbook, the now defunct
Philippinensian in 1952. Of course, Virata saw me work up close in
Quezon Hall when I was in administration in the 60s and perhaps
glimpsed something that might be useful in what he was setting up.
Perhaps not in tinkering with figures but in the general rubric of
getting things done. His faith in me was touching.
In UP gatherings, Virata
invariably tried to get us interested in surveys by conducting straw
votes on the burning issue of the day. He would pass out slips of
paper and ask us to write our preferences. Somebody collected the
slips, made a quick count and told us the results. See, nothing much
to it, he would say about surveys. That was his way of demystifying
what to me was an arcane activity.
In conversations with Joe Luna
Castro of The Manila Times where I had a brief stint in the 50s, the
subject of surveys always came up. Why can’t UP set up a polling
outfit attached to an institute like statistics that Dr. Cristina
Parel headed? Or (later in the 60s), in the institute of mass
communication? This would be of tremendous help for us journalists,
Joe Luna Castro told me. I knew the business world regularly
employed market research using polling techniques. Yes, indeed, why
not have surveys in the political arena.
Perhaps we were still thinking of
the Gallup poll which bombed during the 1949 presidential election
in the US when Gov. Tomas Dewey was already headlined winner in the
Chicago Tribune even before the results were out, when in fact Harry
Truman, losing in preelection polls, turned out to be the winner. A
smiling Truman was shown later holding up a copy of the
“adelantado” Tribune. Analysts said it was Truman’s relentless
campaign by train across the country that turned the tide in his
favor.
Now the Team Unity and the
President herself are gung-ho about their “machinery” which will
deliver a 12-0 victory for them next month despite their dismal
showing in recent polls, with only three of them certain to be among
the first nine. The last three slots are up for grabs. For both
opposition and Team Unity, “machinery” meant money (from all
sorts of dubious sources) and the so-called command vote. Plus the
logistics and networks of cheating as borne out in the last
election. These are not factored in the surveys—which predicted
results can turn awry when the “machinery” operates.
I remember we didn’t have the
surveys until after EDSA, the professional type done by Social
Weather Station and Pulse Asia, founded by UP bred academics. Their
turf and putative integrity are zealously guarded by other academics
who probably act as consultants for them. Ibon Foundation, an
independent think-tank that does quarterly surveys as part of its
public service, is considered a maverick, first because it does not
do commissioned (or paid) surveys, and second, because of its being
red-baited. Curiously, the results of the three polls, more often
than not, are not far apart from each other. Why not? The IBON
pollsters are also social science people, with their Board chair and
research director a PhD in economics.
Tomorrow The Sunday Times will
devote the issue to polls/surveys—a prognosis of some sort
regarding the outcome of the senatorial election. I have been asked
to give my two-bits worth of prognostication. Glad to oblige.
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