Poll surveys are fake news, too

YOU will remember that in April this year, radio and TV stations orchestrated the “Oplan Kontra Fake News” in collaboration with the Presidential Communications Office (PCO), aimed at tackling fake news in both mainstream and online media.

The irony of it all is that the campaign has failed to suppress questionable pre-election, mind-conditioning surveys that are probably “advertorials” in disguise.

The latest case in point is the 2028 presidential preference survey of Pulse Asia conducted through alleged face-to-face interviews with 2,400 adults from September 17 to 24, 2026. It showed Vice President Sara Duterte leading against imaginary contenders like Naga Mayor Leni Robredo, Senator Raffy Tulfo, and Senator Risa Hontiveros, in that order.

Believing them to be fake news, I would rather not re-echo the preference percentages.

I remember a quotation attributed to Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Propaganda Minister in Nazi Germany: “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”

This reminds us of the frequent surveys dished out by two pollsters that the late Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago warned against for being “commercial” or paid to prefabricate a desired result.

While running for president in 2016, she complained, “My name has been removed from some of the forms used in these surveys so that respondents would be forced to vote for other candidates.”

Why are we still being bombarded with continuing surveys by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) and Pulse Asia, among others, showing certain politicians to be front-runners in an election that is still two years away?

VP Sara still “loved” by most Filipinos in spite of the ongoing impeachment trial at the Senate/Impeachment Court? Do they still trust her? Are they satisfied with her unspecified performance?

Presidential Adviser on Poverty Alleviation Lorenzo “Larry” Gadon does not think so. In an interview, he said, “Imagine there are 55 million Filipinos voters and only 1,800 are surveys. What kind of joke is that?”

That’s not even one person for each of the 42,036 barangays! No wonder neither you nor I have stumbled upon a survey respondent.

Frankly, I don’t understand how these “scientific surveys” shift approval, trust and satisfaction ratings through so-called face-to-face interviews.

A survey by the National Momentum Survey showed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. getting a net approval rating of -18.9 percentage points, with 38.5 percent of Filipino adults saying they were satisfied with his performance and 57.4 percent dissatisfied.

Conversely, Vice President Sara Duterte recorded a net approval of +29.5 percentage points, with 61.3 percent approving of her performance and 31.8 percent disapproving.

The survey, conducted from Aug. 18 to 23, 2026, asked respondents whether they considered the performance of Marcos and Duterte “good,” “very good,” “poor” or “very poor.”

This National Momentum Survey is another addition to more or less a dozen commercial pollsters that have accumulated. As to whether they make money from their political surveys, your guess is as good as mine.

Way back in November 2017, Pulse Asia compared then-President Rodrigo Duterte to his predecessors Benigno Aquino III, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and Joseph Estrada. For approval ratings nationwide, only Duterte breached the 90% mark, getting 91% as a maximum. Aquino came in second with 80%; Estrada, third with 74%; and Arroyo, fourth with 63%.

In the past, survey firms were not keen on popularity ratings of politicians — except during months preceding an election when they would ask candidates to “sponsor” a survey. Naturally, in the hope of generating mind-conditioning bandwagon propaganda, they would “sponsor.”

I remember a statement attributed to a congressman on how first-time senatorial candidate Nancy Binay made it in 2013.

Rep. Toby Tiangco, as the spokesman of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA), revealed that his party had paid a PHP 1 million “subscription” for each of the surveys published in November 2012, January, February, March and April 2013.

The last survey prophetically ranked her No. 5, and she placed fifth indeed.