Sunday, January 21, 2007 Balingit: Mark Lapid leads survey By Allan Balingit On a High Note
IF ELECTIONS would be conducted today, Governor Mark would probably still win? That is, if a recent survey showing him leading comfortably holds true.
While receiving a lot of negative reports lately coming out of some media outlets, the young governor's star seems to continue shining. An independent poll indicates him garnering the nod of 71.5 percent of some 6,000 respondents. This is spread over the province's entire 21 municipalities and several resettlement areas using the Universal Method of Survey, wherein interviews are conducted every 10 houses and the number of respondents of each town depends on a certain percentage of its voting population.
The independent survey done December last year clearly shows him leading Board Member Lilia 'Baby' Pineda, who received the affirmation of 13.7 percent of those surveyed, while a relatively big chunk of some 15 percent who answered the poll remain undecided.
In his hometown of Porac, despite being abandoned by almost the entire municipal leadership recently, Lapid continued to earn the support of most of his kabalens, as 82.4 percent of the respondents there say they would still vote for him.
The same is true in almost all the localities despite the fact that majority of these towns’ chief executives had withdrawn their support and placed it on Baby Pineda.
As expected, Baby Pineda remains strong in Lubao, with more than 63 percent of her townmates saying they want her to be the next governor.
Although Mark is leading by as much as 57.8 percent according to that poll, if we are to take the result of that survey seriously, it is still very early to put your money on him as the campaign period hasn't even started yet.
Definitely as push comes to shove, we should expect more bombs exploding from both camps, and as expected certain issues would crop up old and new ones alike.
For sure, no amount of expenses and political maneuvering would be spared for that coveted seat at the Capitol. I guess we all know what I am saying here, as it is common knowledge that money would play a very important role in these elections.
Meantime, there is a feeling here among media practitioners that Lapid's camp appears to be waging a “silent” campaign by not fighting back -- a full throttle no-holds-barred media counter attack -- but instead I was informed that they prefer to do it the old fashioned way --film-showing in the barrios. Would you believe?
A makeshift movie cinema is set up playing Mark's 'Batas Militar' film which naturally captures the audience’s innate fascination with movie stars, in this case the enchantment with the governor as he defends the poor and the lowly -- for reel of course.
Nonetheless, even though it may appear to be a simple strategy, I believe it an effective one because it is relatively direct and it creates a bond between the governor and the viewer. As we all know, the unbeaten Lapids’ key to political success is their seeming love affair with the masses.
The film showing event also is a venue for the governor to highlight his accomplishments as part of the program in all their sorties. It is like hitting two birds with one stone -- the reel and the real, the heart and the mind.
