Election surveys as public service

The University of San Carlos survey which showed Rep. Tomas Osmeña of Cebu City’s south district and Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama in a close race for the mayorship bears watching.

It’s less than 20 days to the May 13 election.

The survey showed that while the mayor led in November, the final month for the filing of candidacies, Osmeña overtook him by March.

This developed despite Rama’s showbiz-fueled rallies courtesy of his cousin, talent manager and congressional candidate Annabelle Rama.

Rama can at least heave a sigh of relief that the lead of his former patron isn’t insurmountable. Osmeña, of course, was not pleased to be even suspected of losing this race. He said he believes his own survey which places him miles ahead of Rama.

We welcome the effort of the well respected Catholic university to undertake a non-partisan, scientific survey by the Department of Political Science’s Center for Governance and Leadership.

There were 500 respondents in the November survey and a bigger pool of 1,500 respondents in the March leg.

Let it not be said that pre-election surveys can only be done by the Social Weather Station or Pulse Asia.

Even SWS founder Mahar Mangahas has repeatedly said Cebu’s academic community had the technical and intellectual resources to do exactly what he’s been doing for over 20 years.

Social science academics and professionals in Cebu are actually being tapped by political camps to do conduct surveys, but the results are kept confidential for strict internal use of their paying client.

So it’s a public service indeed for a university to undertake a survey whose results are intended “to shape political discourse” with no allegiance to any candidate or party.

We suggest that USC maximize its credibility by keeping the process and results fully transparent.

Releasing the results in a press conference where the study was explained was a good move. They can also post the results online and discuss the methodology in more detail.

The fear that pre-election surveys would “condition the minds” of voters has long been debunked in Supreme Court cases where the SWS won its battle to conduct political surveys before an actual election.

The SWS showed, in statstical analysis, that voters were not swayed in the 2007 and 2010 election by preliminary findings of surveys. There was no “statistical correlation” shown between exposure to or awareness of SWS survey result and how they voted.

In the 2010 presidential election, for example, it was shown that most voters had already made up their mind who to vote for by February or three months before the actual election.

There’s always room for an independent and scientific survey to enrich our exercise of freedom of expression. That in essence is what the Supreme Court upheld in allowing SWS to continue its pre-election polling.

We hope this invigorates Cebu’s academics and research groups to continue the SWS tradition in our community as a public service.