The Philippine Online Chronicles

Why it may be an uphill climb for Mar Roxas

The vice-presidential race of the 2010 polls will probably be dissected and studied for many years to come.  There are still some votes to be counted but unless something unexpected happens, it’s very likely that Jejomar Binay will be proclaimed as the next vice president of the Philippines. This would come as a big shock to a lot of people since the voters have been primed by the media and the surveys to believe it would be a two-horse race between Mar Roxas and Loren Legarda. Binay’s name didn’t really float to the stratosphere until the final week before the polls. That very same poll was scoffed at not only by Roxas but also by Legarda who was said to have lost over twelve points in a one-month period.

The Surveys

According to the last survey released by Social Weather Station commissioned by Business World, Binay and Roxas were actually tied for the top spot with a little over a week to go before the elections.  This was a meteoric rise for the Makati mayor considering that Roxas has been consistently topping the opinion polls since he gave way to Noynoy Aquino late last year. Roxas even posted a near-majority rating of 49 percent in late January compared to 28 percent to Legarda and 17 percent to Binay. The rate of increase in Binay supporters only picked up during the final three weeks of the campaign. By late March, Binay was still trailing Roxas by 21 points (42 to 21) and in April, he was able to cut the deficit somewhat to 14 (Roxas 39, Binay 25).

It was in the late April survey that Binay finally caught up with Legarda. They were statistically tied with ratings of 25 for Binay and 24 for Legarda. Roxas seemed so far away at 39 percent. This is why the last minute twelve-point spike for Binay left a lot of people incredulous. The halving of Legarda’s support also caught many by surprise, despite the fact that the campaign of Nacionalista Party’s presidential bet Manny Villar was also sputtering.

Loren Legarda’s fall from grace

Loren Legarda may have lost during the 2004 vice-presidential race to Noli de Castro but she was by no means chopped liver. To prove her detractors wrong, she ran for the senate again in 2007 and topped the race once again despite running against an upstart with plenty of momentum in Chiz Escudero. Legarda declared her intentions to run for the vice presidency early and was taken by surprise when her supposed running mate (Escudero) decided to not throw his hat in the ring. This made her sort of a political orphan and forced her to once again shift parties a few months before the actual elections. Manny Villar would swoop in and make her his vice-presidential candidate with the Nacionalista ticket and both were considered to be formidable opponents.

Interestingly, it was Legarda who made a big move in the last weeks of the 2004 campaign to close the gap between her and de Castro. From a 28 point gap (57 to 29) in February, Loren was able to pull within four points during the first week of May (de Castro 43, Legarda 39). The 2004 polls were quite different though – there were only four candidates and the other two didn’t really pose a threat to either de Castro or Legarda. Ask any average Filipino now and they would probably be hard pressed to name Herminio Aquino (Raul Roco’s running mate) and Rodolfo Pajo (the running mate of the disqualified candidate Eddie Gil) as the two other contenders. Pajo and Aquino combined only accounted for less than 3.5 percent of the electorate’s support.

Legarda lost the race by over 800 thousand votes in a very controversial election that continues to be questioned to this day. The investigation has gone nowhere and Legarda decided to not go ahead with the complaint since it would require her to spend millions of pesos just to do a recount of certain precincts. Despite the loss, Legarda still got almost 47 percent of the votes and in most elections that would have been enough to win.

Nothing could have prepared her for the debacle that would happen in 2010. The wheels came off when the votes were finally counted. Despite polling consistently in the 20s, Legarda’s numbers fell to just 12 percent in a matter of weeks. The campaign had almost no time to recover the lost momentum. And the results definitely reflected the unravelling of the entire campaign. Legarda is currently polling third in nearly all the regions. The only place where she is second is in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao – not exactly the most vote-rich region in the Philippines.

She has conceded the race and will be returning to the senate to finish her term that ends in 2013. She can still run for reelection if she chooses to.

How the regions voted for the VP

According to GMA-7’s graphical representation of the voting breakdown (with almost 90 percent of the returns already in), Luzon has stunningly rejected Roxas’s bid to become the nation’s next vice president. He suffered major losses in the National Capital Region and southern Luzon by over 600 thousand votes each. This was a major blow to his cause since the NCR and Region IV-A are among the most vote-rich regions in the country. Binay also more than doubled Roxas’s vote total in Cagayan Valley to gain an upper hand of over 300 thousand votes. Binay had relatively slim margins of victory in the Ilocos, Mimaropa and Bicol Regions. Mimaropa (Region IV-B) had the closest contest with Roxas narrowly missing out with a score of 338,911 for Binay and 334,196 for Roxas.

The Visayas for the most part was in Roxas’s corner. The Capiz native secured big wins in Western and Central Visayas (Regions VI and VII). He won by over 1.1 million votes in his home region of Western Visayas while he defeated Binay by over 700 thousand votes with the results in central Visayas. According to ABS-CBN’s break down of votes at the provincial level, it’s clear that Roxas won via landslide in all of the provinces included in the two regions.

Roxas couldn’t pull off a clean sweep of the three Visayas regions, however. Binay led Roxas by around 54 thousand votes in Eastern Visayas. The province of Leyte that had a very high number of registered voters was won by Binay. Binay would also win both Eastern and Western Samar along with the island province of Biliran. Roxas would win the provinces of Northern Samar and Southern Leyte with razor-thin margins.

Mindanao was definitely Binay country in the same way that Luzon was. Binay would win every single region – Zamboanga Peninsula, Northern Mindanao, Davao, Caraga, SOCCSKSARGEN and the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. None of the margins were larger than 300 thousand votes but considering that Roxas was already trailing in all but two regions, he certainly needed more votes to make up for the deficit. Roxas made a lot of gains in the Visayas but he was still facing the big margins that Binay put on him in the Luzon regions.

From a regional perspective, the scorecard is a slaughter. Binay won 14 of the 16 regions while Roxas only won two. It’s actually surprising that the lead is less than a million considering how lopsided the region breakdown has been. By sheer extrapolation, it would be hard to believe that the uncanvassed votes would come from the two regions where Roxas is winning. Mindanao votes are more than likely to swing to Binay’s favor and if in fact the last votes entering the COMELEC’s figures are coming from Mindanao, Binay’s lead will even increase. The areas where failures of election have happened like in Lanao del Sur are actually polling in favor of Binay. In fact, Roxas is only polling third in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao and is way behind Binay and Legarda in the vote-rich provinces of Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao.

Should Roxas lose this race, it would be apparent that his campaign failed to touch base with regions that were geographically less proximal to his home region. Binay’s dominance literally litters the map when it comes to his appeal and ability to inspire voters despite his stature as a local government official in the National Capital Region.

With the advent of automation and social media, it would be easier to be updated with the significant statistics and date regarding the polls and it would easier to track the regional and provincial preferences.

Image taken from SWS website