Surveys, we are always told, are mere snapshots. They give you an indication of the public mood, the public’s likes and dislikes, the public temper, the public’s favorite, or conversely, it’s “unfriended,” at a given point in time.
That given point in time is defined as the date or dates when the field research for the announced results was taken.
Field research begins with the so-called research design, which is the questionnaire the field researchers ask the randomly-sampled interviewee’s positions or opinions about the subject or object of the survey.
This is a tricky part. If the research design is faulty, or biased in order to evince a desired response, or so worded as to influence the results of the survey, then the “snapshot” serves no purpose except to fool the public if it is publicly announced, or fool the client.
There are many corpses of so-called polling research firms that litter the political scene. There are so many election corpses of politicians who were fooled by their own commissioned surveys as well. Some politicians design their own surveys; field their own surveyors, and end up fooling themselves. They lose.
One will remember that some polling outfits surface during election campaign periods, and then fade away, only to resurrect themselves the next election cycle. Their intention is to fool the public, or to be used as a tool for fooling the public. Media sometimes “buys” their results, but in the end, they are discredited.
There are firms which have lasted the test of time. Some are into consumer surveys, done principally for clients who sell products or services to the public, and market research is a very important tool for gauging the probability of a product’s consumer appeal or success.
Others do periodic surveys of the public mood, the public temper, and as such are regarded as “political” surveys. Two which have stood out for decades in the Philippine scene are Social Weather Stations (SWS) and Pulse Asia.
Media often publishes their findings, politicians and their advisers look to them as some kind of bell weather of the public mood.
Which is why the recent discordant findings of the two have become a matter of curiosity, if not national concern.
The period when the field research was made happened on the same period—the last week of September. A matter of a few days difference makes little if any difference at all.
Unlike a real photo snapshot, where one can smile and then frown in the next shot, the public mood does not change so easily. A recent example is the Duterte victory in 2016. Towards the end of April, it was clear the man would be elected president. The trend was established, and no amount of mudslinging, and there were tons of that, would change the public mood.
On the other hand, the numbers for the vice-presidential contest were so close, between Leni and Bongbong, that up to the closing of the precincts, it was anybody’s game.
So why were two public opinion polls, done in about the same period in time, with basically the same questionnaire or research design they had employed over so many years, differ starkly in the results?
One said there was a steep decline in the President’s approval ratings, as well as trust in the person himself. The other said there was virtually no change from the June results, which posted a spectacular approval and trust rating.
The answer could be in the sampling method. The Philippines is such a huge place, with so many disparate islands, that capturing a general picture of a particular region becomes such a difficult task.
So, when for instance, a research firm says these are the results for Visayas, that does not necessarily mean they polled respondents from the Waray, the Cebuano, or the Hiligaynon communities, depending on the population size. Because the total respondent base is 1,200 samples, one can hardly expect the research firm to divide the 250 to 300 samples for Visayas in all the three principal ethno-linguistic regions. All the more impossible is it to have a picture of every province in the Visayas using 250 to 300 sample size.
The research firm “rotates” the area of coverage in its periodic surveys, then the results are cross-tested by its analysts, weighted accordingly as to come out with a fairly accurate reading of the entire Visayas using the limited number of respondents.
So, did SWS use Negros or the abolished Negros Island Region for its Visayas picture-taking? And did Pulse use Cebu, which is the home-province of the President? Perhaps.
We do not expect the two to explain, much less identify their sampling areas. These are supposed to be trade secrets, and we have to respect that. Take their results at face value. Believe if you want to; dispute if you are not happy.
Thus, the gloating of the anti-Duterte sectors when SWS announced a steep decline became an overnight phenomenon. The Pulse “re-affirmation” was a chastening, as in cold water doused upon the gloating.
The best way for policy-makers and program implementors to take these surveys is, as Duterte himself says, “just do your job as you see fit”. It’s akin to the oft-quoted statement, “damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.”
The problem of the President, if I may so opine, is he is always “damn the torpedoes,” but the “full steam” that is supposed to be provided by his administrative engine is not “ahead” enough.
Whether you take SWS or Pulse as your political North Star, the truth is, the President must demand more from his team. More “CSW” or complete staff work, more derring-do, as in a “change” mood, and more decisiveness to do what must be done, in contra-distinction to the previous government’s “teka-teka” attitude also called derisively by the same critics then and now, as “noynoying.”
The results of the 2016 elections, where Rodrigo Roa Duterte trounced his closest opponent by a mile with 16 million votes, was a clear message for change.