Lawyer claims latest SWS poll biased in favor of Poe

Atty. Glenn Chong (Facebook photo)

MANILA – Lawyer Glenn Chong, a convener of the Citizens for Clean and Credible Elections, questioned the recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey on presidential preferences as he suspected that it was blinkered in favor of Senator Grace Poe over other possible presidential contenders.

Chong particularly noticed the distribution of the sample size of 1,200 respondents of the poll. He asserted that the distribution did not represent the actual voter distribution in the four geographic sites: Metro Manila, the rest of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

In SWS’s survey conducted from June 5 to 8, 300 respondents were taken in each geographic site. They were then asked to name their top three preferred presidential candidates in next year’s national elections. Overall, 42 percent of the respondents chose Poe, 34 percent picked Vice President Jejomar Binay, and 21 percent named Interior Secretary Mar Roxas.

“[There was] a skewing of sample size in favor of, or against, the Top 2 main contenders,” Chong said in his Facebook post, clarifying that he was not a supporter of Binay.

Chong pointed out that the proper distribution of respondents per site should be 138 in Metro Manila, 572 in the rest of Luzon, 248 in Visayas and 277 in Mindanao, instead of 300 respondents per geographic site.

He also noted that the alleged ‘demolition job’ against Binay was ‘most apparent and effective’ in Metro Manila and Luzon. He then concluded that the poll was an ‘obvious’ campaign for Poe.

Furthermore, Poe traced her roots in Visayas, which got 300 respondents instead of only 248, while Binay traced his in the rest of Luzon which also got 300 respondents when it should have been about 572.

“By arbitrarily polling 300 respondents in Metro Manila or 162 more respondents than necessary, the survey results were affected by up to a maximum of 13.5 percentage points (12 respondents = 1 percentage point). This situation clearly favors Poe as against,” Chong said.