MANILA, Philippines — At least nine in 10 Filipinos will be facing the upcoming new year with hope, a survey from polling firm Pulse Asia released on Monday showed.
According to Pulse Asia’s survey, which ran from November 27 to December 1, only eight percent said they cannot say if they are hopeful or are without hope for 2023. Meanwhile, only 0.1 percent said they are without hope.
The high ‘hopeful’ sentiment is shared across all locales surveyed by Pulse Asia — 94 percent for the National Capital Region (NCR), 89 percent over Balance Luzon, 99 percent for Visayas, and 89 percent over Mindanao.
“Virtually all Filipino adults (92%) will face the year ahead with hope, a sentiment echoed by 89% to 99% across geographic areas and by 86% to 94% in the various socio-economic classes,” Pulse Asia said in their report.
“Ambivalence on the matter is expressed by 8% of adults while less than 1% say they will face the coming new year without hope,” it added.
As to how their Christmas celebrations in 2022 would be compared to the previous year, 43 percent of respondents said it would be “more prosperous”; 52 percent said it would be the same as last year, while six percent said it would be “poorer” than last year.
The 52 percent who said it would be the same can be broken down into 42 percent of respondents who said that it is the same as last year that was prosperous also, while 10 percent said it was the same in the sense that it was not prosperous.
“While 43% of the country’s adult population will have a more prosperous holiday celebration this year, 42% expect their celebration to be no different from the one they had last year, which they describe as a prosperous one. The same pattern of public opinion may be observed in the rest of Luzon (35% versus 41%), Mindanao (46% versus 48%), Class ABC (36% versus 48%), Class D (44% versus 41%), and Class E (39% versus 43%),” Pulse Asia said.
“Most Visayans (66%) will have a more prosperous holiday celebration this year while a small majority of Metro Manilans (58%) say their celebration this year will be just as prosperous as what they had last year,” it added.
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The high optimism of Filipinos comes despite rising prices of goods, as the headline inflation rate hit a 14-year high of eight percent in November 2022, pushing the average year-to-date inflation rate to 5.6 percent.
READ: Philippine inflation leaps to 14-year high in November
Pulse Asia said they obtained the results through a face-to-face interview of 1,200 Filipino adults. The survey has a ± 2.8% error margin at the 95 percent confidence level, while subnational estimates have a ± 5.7% margin of error at 95% confidence level per locale.