Duterte on top

DAVAO City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte posted a clear lead among presidential candidates in the final The Standard Poll days before the May 9 elections.

One out of every three registered voters or 32 percent of the 3,000 respondents said they will vote for Duterte if the elections were held today.

With a nationwide margin of error of +/- 1.8 percent, Senator Grace Poe and Liberal Party standard bearer Manuel Roxas II were statistically tied at second and third places with 25 percent and 22 percent, respectively.

Vice President Jejomar Binay remained in fourth place with 15 percent while Senator Miriam Santiago got two percent.

Duterte’s numbers, however, went down in two major geographical areas—in the National Capital Region and in the Visayas — in the survey conducted by resident pollster Junie Laylo from April 27 to May 1, covering 79 provinces and 40 highly urbanized cities.

The survey period covered the time when Senator Antonio Trillanes IV accused Duterte of receiving more than P200 million deposited in the mayor’s BPI account.

Poe was the top choice of respondents from Metro Manila with 32 percent. Duterte came in at a close second at 29 percent, one percentage point lower than his ratings in last month’s The Standard Poll.

Roxas, on the other hand, posted a wide lead in the Visayas with 41 percent, followed by Duterte with 25 percent.

Poe led the race in North and Central Luzon (31 percent) and South Luzon and Bicol (31 percent), but her ratings went down from last survey’s 34 percent and 39 percent, respectively.

Duterte’s numbers soared even higher in Mindanao with majority of the respondents saying they will vote for him.

In Davao region, in particular, the ratings of the mayor went up to 87 percent.

Duterte also maintained a lead in the latest ABS-CBN-commissioned Pulse Asia survey, with 33 percent of the vote.

Sharing second place were administration candidate Roxas (22 percent) and Poe (21 percent).

In third place was Binay (17 percent) followed by Santiago (2 percent).

Only four percent of the respondents said they were not inclined to vote for any of the presidential contenders.

Based on a multistage probability sample of 4,000 registered voters 18 years old and above, with biometrics, Pulse Asia Research’s nationwide survey has a ± 1.5% error margin at the 95 percent confidence level.

Sub-national estimates for the geographic areas covered in the survey have the following error margins at 95 percent confidence level: ± 4.6 percent for Metro Manila, ± 2.3 percent for the rest of Luzon and ± 3.4 percent for Visayas and ± 3.3 percent for Mindanao.

Poe said she was unfazed by the latest surveys, saying they have their own research that show different results.

“I have always been saying this—what I want to believe the survey where I am low so that I will not be confident. Here, we are going against the strong machinery of the government, and secondly, of course, the dissatisfaction among our people for this administration,” said Poe.

She declined to say if she found the result showing her tied with Roxas suspicious.

The Pulse Asia survey also showed that Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and administration candidate Leni Robredo were statistically tied in the vice presidential race, with 28 percent and 30 percent, respectively. Senators Francis Escudero and Alan Peter Cayetano shared second place with 18 percent and 15 percent, respectively, while Senators Gregorio Honasan II and Antonio Trillanes IV had three percent and two percent, respectively. With Sandy Araneta and Macon Ramos- Araneta