The Inquirer Briefing:

Feasibility of a Fearless Forecast

Ms. Ma. Lourdes Tiquia

Founder & General Manager
 The Inquirer
Briefing:
Feasibility of a Fearless
Forecast
• 26 days to go before May 10, 2010
• Look at two sides of the coin
• Political campaigns are all about numbers
• Automation is an extraneous variable
• Those who are ahead are so because of Air War
• Those who are at the end are so because they have
limited money; ill-prepared or GMA tag
• PGMA is not a lame duck president
• The road to Malacanang has been changed!
 The Inquirer
Briefing:
Feasibility of a Fearless
• 26 days to go beforeForecast
May 10, 2010
Character, organizational jumps and raiding
will define the last few days of the 2010
campaign. We will see tail enders making a
last go (till the Fat Lady sings) and front
runners canceling each other out in the
process of trying to pull away.
If front runners engaged in mudslinging,
voters will stay away from polls or an
underdog will have to be positioned.
 The Inquirer
Briefing:
Feasibility of a Fearless
Forecast
• Look at two sides of the coin
In this campaign, there are two
sides of the proverbial coin that
matters: surveys and the ground
war.
Surveys is just a snap shot in a
point in time but is valuable in
terms of resource build up.
Ground war is crucial in terms
of WOM and trait of voter
(personal)
 The Inquirer
Briefing:
Feasibility of a Fearless
Forecast
• Political campaigns are all
about numbers, that covers
command and market votes.
There are a total of more than
85,000 candidates for only 17,000
positions. A national candidate
covers 42,000 barangays, 1,495
municipalities, 136 chartered
cities, 81 provinces in 17 regions.
 The Inquirer
Briefing:
Feasibility of a Fearless
Forecast
• Political campaigns are all about
numbers.
1. TRV = 48.3M
2. ETO = 74.5% or 35.9M
3. Votes to Win = 12.4M
 The Inquirer
Briefing:
Feasibility of a Fearless
Forecast
• Political campaigns are all about
numbers. If elections were held
today…
AQUINO – 17.9M
VILLAR – 12.1M
ESTRADA – 9.2M
TEODORO – 2.9M
GORDON – 1.4M
 The Inquirer
Briefing:
Feasibility of a Fearless
Forecast
• Automation is an extraneous
variable
Time, Queues & Summer Heat
Back-to-Back 32 inch Ballot
One ballot per voter
One PCOS per 7 precincts
Manual voting but automated
counting & canvassing
 The Inquirer
Briefing:
Feasibility of a Fearless
Forecast
• Those who are ahead are so because of
Air War 1. Villar ranked 6th among Top 20
advertisers for the First Quarter in 2010.
Villar spent Php1.23 Billion (up by
6,575%) from Php18 Million in the 4th
Quarter of 2009.
2. Aquino ranked 11th at
Php526 Million in the 1st Quarter.
3. Issue of “paid for” &
“paid by”
 The Inquirer
Briefing:
Feasibility of a Fearless
Forecast
• Those who are at the end are so because:
1. Limited money to parlay into ads and pr
2. Ill-prepared: messaging, framing, positioning and
organizing
3. GMA factor (net satisfaction rating of -53%)
 The Inquirer
Briefing:
Feasibility of a Fearless
Forecast
• PGMA is not a lame duck president
 Allowed Erap to run
 First incumbent president to run for Congress
 Focused on the HOR than candidate for
presidency
 Key appointments: DND, AFP, OES
 Supreme Court
 Controls IRA and PDAF releases
 Problems in automation (UV,
indelible ink, 30% manual)
 Presidential Electoral Tribunal
 The Inquirer
Briefing:
Feasibility of a Fearless
• The road to Malacanang has Forecast
been changed
1. Supreme Court ruling on Peñera changed nature
of campaigning (prohibition attaches only during
campaign period and not upon filing).
2. Villar air war offensive and saturated postering
created an impression of being No. 1.
3. Accomplishment and track record
have been set aside in favor of an
emotional brand.
4. To each his own; no party to rely
on.
 The Gladwell
Barometer

The Tipping Point…

The Tipping Point is when Cory died and somewhere in the

labyrinth of the Liberal party saw the potential of an emotional
brand
(a winning brand?) – AQUINO.

As Gladwell said, “Things can happen all at once, and little changes
can make a huge difference…
The virtue of an epidemic, after all, is that just a little input is
enough to get it started, and it can spread very, very quickly.”
 The Gladwell
Barometer

BLINK… Villar & Erap

BLINK is about “rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that

happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first
time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first
few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump
to a series of conclusions.”
 The Gladwell
Barometer

OUTLIERS… Teodoro & Gordon

“outliers—in men and women who, for one reason or another, are
so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary
experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us …our
understanding of success was really crude…is that we've been far
too focused on the individual—on describing the
characteristics and habits and personality traits of those who
get furthest ahead in the world. And that's the problem, because in
order to understand the outlier I think you have to look
around them—at their culture and community and family
and generation. We've been looking at tall trees, and I think
we should have been looking at the forest.”
•Aquino has leveled off from Jan-Mar; “ahead” of
Villar by 12% because Villar took a dive.
•Villar’s base is soft while Erap is steady
•Aquino has leveled off in Feb-March; “ahead” of
Villar by 11% because Villar took a dive.
•Villar’s base is soft while Erap is steady
•Aquino appears to be slipping Mar to Apr;
ahead of Villar by 11% because Villar took a
dive in Feb and is leveling off in Mar and Apr..
•Villar’s base is soft while Erap is steady
 ☑ Automation
system
THE CHALLENGES
☑ 30% manual =
Php10.7M
☑ Undecided ranges
from 10-15%=
3.6M to 5.4M
☑ Viral propaganda:
Internet and SMS
☑ Turn-out of New
Voters (est.40%)
Oh … I don’t want to be so fearless
except to say that scenario
buildings are being made, as we
speak here…
 On “Pamumulitika”
•More than half of Filipino Voters believe that…

“Ang pagsagot sa ibang paniniwala ay pamumulitika”

54% - Talagang/medyo sumasang-ayon
Project Aragon

35% - Maarning sumang-ayon, maaring hindi

20% - Medyo/Hindi sumasang-ayon

“Ang pamumulitika ay patuloy na pagsasalita at pagbabatiko

sa kalaban”
58% - Talagang/medyo sumasang-ayon
 On “Pamumulitika”
•Majority of Filipino voters believe that…

“Hindi nagiging mabuti ang pulitika kung maraming awaya

sa mga lider at nakakalimutan ang bayan”
Project Aragon

74% - Talagang/medyo sumasang-ayon

17% - Maaring sumang-ayon, maaring hindi
8% - Medyo/hindi sumasang-ayon
 If mudslinging between Aquino & Villar
Carpe Diem

continues, they will cancel out each

other, opening the door for Erap. But
Erap has his own baggage.
At this point, voters will take a serious
and closer look at credentials, giving
Teodoro and Gordon the fighting
chance.
Carpe Diem

If winning is a long shot for Erap and

he knows fully well that another
Estrada is prepositioning in 2016,
2010 can be his window for
redemption by endorsing the leader
the country truly needs.
My fearless forecast…

Why Carpe Diem?

That is the Latin word for “seize the
day” – an admonition to enjoy the
present, as opposed to placing all
hopes in the future
Thank
you.