Roperos: Political surveys

WHAT seems to be happening now is that many of our electorate in Cebu City and in other parts of the country are suddenly finding themselves with strange bedfellows. They are sleeping with figures in their minds—results of political surveys made for or funded by various political interests trying to find out where their pet political candidates or themselves stand.

But flippancy aside, the surveys are actually making our working days exciting and our sleeping hours interesting, as we are crowded on by all sorts of political information, rumors and intrigues, as well as political propaganda, all passed on, or released, as true. Whatever it is, we feel these days as if our country is hanging on a balance.

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Let me intersperse this with an apolitical survey result, which I feel strikes deep at the heart of this republic’s survival. This is the survey report that about one million people in the Visayas suffered involuntary hunger last year. Viewed in a national setting, it goes up to 4.4 million households.

That makes me feel a little tizzy compared with the survey results I read in the papers regarding the candidates and their candidacies. In Cebu City, for instance, I got this text message from a friend:

“I thought dagdag bawas is a thing of the past with poll automation. But in CDN, Tomas scored 60 percent instead of the actual 50 percent over Atan’s 48, a statistical tie because the margin of error was plus/minus 5 percent. See Sun.Star Cebu, The Freeman and Banat News for correct interpretation of the survey results.

“In Superbalita, they made Tomas win despite the fact that the figures 50 and 48 were a statistical tie because of the plus/minus 5 percent margin of error. Hope it wasn’t made to justify their claim that Alvin won the survey. Truth of the matter is that Alvin’s three point lead can’t be declared a win because the figure is still within the margin of error, statistical tie still.”

Well, that’s part of the beauty of political statistics. One may interpret it in a number of ways. As Sun.Star’s Bzzz said, Kusug canddates were elated, while BOPK downgraded it.

At the national level, the imbroglio in the Senate resulted in the closing of the 14th Congress when the senators supporting Sen. Manny Villar on the C-5 project “anomaly,” did not show up for the last session. This as those who wanted to vote on the report of the case done by the Senate Committee of the Whole were all present to put their verdict on the controversy.

But for lack of a quorum, no session was held. And the case hangs. The next president will have to decide what to do with it.