Administration candidates were off to a good start in dominating the senatorial race early in the campaign period, a recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey found.
Nine candidates of the administration-backed Team PNoy had a statistical chance of winning a Senate seat if the elections were held on Feb. 15-17, results of the SWS survey showed.
Team PNoy is an alliance of candidates from the Liberal Party (LP), Nacionalista Party (NP), Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), PDP Laban and Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP).
Only three candidates of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) made it to the list of probable winners.
The election period officially started on Jan. 13, but campaigning for Senate seats began on Feb. 12.
Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV (LP/Team PNoy, 42 percent), first cousin of President Aquino, broke into the list of winning candidates for the first time in four election surveys, taking the ninth to 10th spot. He was up from 15th place in the January survey in which he obtained 34 percent.
Also winning a spot after being edged out in the past two surveys was Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo “Sonny” M. Angara (LDP/Team PNoy, 39 percent), who ranked 11th to 12th—up one spot in the previous survey where he placed 13th also with 39 percent.
Enrile, Honasan fall
It was a big fall for UNA candidates Jack Enrile (38 percent) and Sen. Gringo Honasan (34 percent), who were both dislodged from the previous survey’s winning list.
Jack Enrile, the son of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, slipped to 13th place from 8th to 9th in the previous survey in which he got 46 percent.
Honasan fell to 15th place—down from his fifth to sixth ranking in the January survey in which he obtained 48 percent.
As in the past two surveys, Sen. Loren Legarda (NPC/Team PNoy) topped the latest SWS survey, with 64 percent of adults saying they would vote for her, one percentage point down from 65 percent in the January survey.
Also staying in their rankings for the past three surveys were Sen. Chiz Escudero (independent/Team PNoy, 62 percent) and Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano (NP/Team Pnoy, 58 percent), who occupied the second and third places, respectively.
Occupying the fourth spot was the wife of outgoing Sen. Manny Villar, former Las Piñas Rep. Cynthia Villar (NP/Team PNoy, 53 percent).
Both in fifth to sixth place were former Movie and Television Review and Classification Board chief Grace Poe (independent/Team PNoy, 48 percent) and Sen. Koko Pimentel (PDP-Laban/Team PNoy, 48 percent).
In seventh place was Nancy Binay (UNA, 47 percent), followed by Sen. Sonny Trillanes (NP/Team PNoy, 46 percent) in eighth place.
Sharing the ninth to tenth place with Aquino was JV Ejercito (UNA), who also got 42 percent.
Also in 11th to 12th place with Angara was former Bukidnon Rep. Juan Miguel Zubiri (UNA), who obtained 39 percent.
Aside from Enrile and Honasan, those who barely made it to the list were former Sen. Jamby Madrigal (LP/Team PNoy, 36 percent), former Sen. Ramon Magsasay Jr. (LP/Team PNoy, 32 percent) and former Sen. Richard Gordon (UNA, 31 percent)
The poll outfit said 47 percent of respondents chose a full slate of 12 candidates; 2 percent were either undecided or did not have an answer; and 4 percent had invalid ballots.
The noncommissioned survey used face-to-face interviews with 1,200 registered voters nationwide and had a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points.—Inquirer Research