PHILIPPINES— Former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. may end up winning the presidential race next year based on the results of an online survey published by one of the country’s leading newspapers.
Marcos emerged as the top candidate in the Manila Bulletin’s (MB) Facebook online presidential survey conducted from October 15 to 17, beating fellow aspirants Manila Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso and Vice President Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo.
The poll generated over 800,000 reactions from netizens who were asked to vote by using the assigned emoji for their preferred candidates.
Marcos won by a landslide. He garnered 655,000 “heart” emojis, followed by Robredo with 216,000 “care” emojis and Domagoso with 33,000 “like” emojis as they ended up as the top three preferred presidential candidates for the 2022 polls.
In its published news article on Monday, the MB reported that 73 percent of the respondents chose Marcos as president “dwarfing” Robredo’s 24 percent votes.
Meanwhile, Domagoso finished third, followed by other presidential candidates Senators Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, Emmanuel “Manny” Pacquiao and Panfilo “Ping” Lacson.
The newspaper also ran a parallel survey on its Twitter and official website where Robredo won against Marcos “by a very slim margin,” the latter’s office said.
However, the number of respondents in the MB website and Twitter polls were “much smaller than those seen in the Facebook survey.”
MB’s website only had 10,500 respondents, Twitter had only 43,300 respondents which was eclipsed by Facebook participants which registered 839,000 respondents.
The paper’s online poll was well-received by netizens compared to the similar survey conducted by online media outfit Rappler.
Marcos’ supporters noted that Rappler took down its online survey amid questions raised by netizens who noticed foreign-sounding names among those who voted for Robredo.
Marcos appealed to his followers on Monday to end the hate campaign against Rappler saying that it should be given “another chance to find honesty in their heart.”
The Manila Bulletin assured the public that the survey will not be taken down and that it is only doing the survey to gauge the sentiment of their readers on their online platforms. It added that it will conduct an online survey every month.
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