Republic of the Philippines

PALAWAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Puerto Princesa City

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

Graduate Education Department

Reaction Paper on Analysis of the Filipino Voting

Behavior from the Perspective of Filipino
Philosophy

Submitted by:
FRANCIS JOSEPH V. BATUIGAS
MAEd student
Submitted to:
RESTIE ALLAN A. PUNO, MAEd
Professor
 Reaction Paper on Analysis of the Filipino Voting Behavior from the
Perspective of Filipino Philosophy
The next senatorial election is 4 months away, but as early as January 2018, the political
fever is on. Soon, we will be flooded with messages meant to get our support. There are
campaign advertisements in radio and television showing the political propaganda and campaign
slogan of the senatorial and party list representatives’ hopefuls.
Let us look on how the Filipinos choose a candidate. According to Mercado, the Filipino world
views are non-dichotomous, has no scientific mind, non-egalitarian, want harmony or balance
with his environment.
According to Publicus Asia Inc, based on their national psychographics survey, there are several
interests, attitudes, opinions (IAO) that politicians look for the voting population:

1. Psychographics versus Demographics

Often campaign planning in the country focuses on demographics, on variables such as

social economic status, age, gender, locale, among others. Demographic analysis “can cover whole
societies, or groups defined by criteria such as education, nationality, religion and ethnicity. While
psychographics is the “study and classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations,
and other psychological criteria, especially in market research.” The sooner candidates realize that
elections are not about them rather, more and more about the fragmented voters whom they can
only connect if they understood what makes them stand out in terms of shared IAO.

With psychographics, it will no longer be a mass bombardment of TV ads placing more and more
money on frequency and forgetting all about reach since the candidate may not know what is
important for the voters. There are two kinds of votes: market and command votes. It is easier to
deal with command votes because those are the candidate’s hard support.

How one deciphers and listens to market votes is a function of psychographic variables.
Segmentation, targeting and positioning of the voters can only be made if the candidate knows his
voters, which can be broken down to High Anxiety, Low Information and Moderate Expectations.
Political campaigns typically do a good job of connecting with the first two categories and a
relatively poor job with the “moderates”.
2. Voters care most about the character
Each election candidate brings to the table a unique set of characteristics and propositions.
Journalists, voter advocates, writers, and interest groups frequently opine that Filipinos should
think about platforms rather than personality when considering the people running for office.
Results of this survey shows that young voters still put candidate character above experience,
positions, and education when considering their votes for President and Senator.

It is simplistic to say, however, that people vote on personality.

They vote based on their perception of the quality of a candidate’s character. Among a long
list of a person’s features, voters most frequently chose the following candidate traits as being
most important in considering their vote for President: Maka-Diyos (14%), May malasakit
(Compassionate 14%), Mabilis magdesisyon at kumilos (Decisive 13%), Matalino (Intelligent
12%), and Mapagkakatiwalaan (Trustworthy 12%). For Senator the most frequently identified
important traits are Mapagkakatiwalaan (Trustworthy 15%), Maka-Diyos (12%), Matulungin sa
nangangailangan (Helps the needy 10%), and Maka-masa (Pro-poor 10%).

For presidential candidates, it is of prime importance in choosing whom to vote that their
locality received personal help from the candidate (26.3%), the second most important is being
pro-poor (18.8%). This interest in local help is reflected in the young public’s interest in what is
happening in local politics (78% interested), and many agree that most of the issues being
discussed in Manila do not affect their own personal lives (55%).

Voters were asked to rank in order of importance in their vote choice, the following candidate
traits: candidate’s character, level of education or course studied, experience in politics, views in
life, beliefs or principles in life. By a large percentage, candidate character is ranked most
important or second most important by young voters. The rest of the options have fairly equal
distribution of responses, none clearly besting the others.

Hence, Filipinos looks at the political candidates’ platform or program of governance very least.
Maybe this is because of the non-dichotomous world view of the Filipinos. Since platform and
program of governance are exterior factors and not from within the Filipinos loob, we tend to
ignore it. Filipinos tend to ignore things which are not natural to them.

REFERENCES:

THE MANILA TIMES. (2015, JULY 17). “Getting to Know Filipino Voters”. Retrieved February
09,2019 from https://www.manilatimes.net/getting-to-know-filipino-voters/201351/

Mojica, F.J. “I Vote Filipino Political Participation”. Retrieved February 09, 2019 from
http://www.academia.edu/23929491/I_VOTE_FILIPINO_POLITICAL_PARTICIPATION