Duterte gets high approval rating in Davao City survey by Ateneo

Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte. INQUIRER MINDANAO FILE PHOTO

DAVAO CITY, Philippines – Mayor Rodrigo Duterte got a high approval rating in a city-wide polls recently released by the Ateneo de Davao University (AdDU) research center, although threats to crimes, extrajudicial killings and illegal drug transactions continue to worry its residents.

The social survey, conducted from April 9 to 16 this year among 632 respondents in the city’s three districts and 12 sub-districts, showed that Duterte continued to get an overwhelming 90 percent approval rating for his handling of the peace and order situation in the city, with the respondents defining peace and order as an “absence of illegal drug trafficking, juvenile delinquency and violent crimes.”

The survey, released on Friday, May 9, measured the people’s opinion in a wide range of topics that included the city’s economic performance, to household finances, self-rated poverty, to peace and order and governance and the state of happiness.

But 91 percent of the respondents were worried about crimes or its threats of crimes in the city; with 69 percent of them worried about extrajudicial killings, 66 percent worried about illegal drug transactions, 65 percent about illegal drugs and illegal drug trafficking and 54 percent about bomb threats and terrorism. Researchers also noted that even in the area of government, respondents still cited drugs as the most important problem facing the city.

Prof. Lourdesita Sobrevega-Chan, head of the University Research Council, said the poll’s 632 respondents, exceeded the 400 statistically acceptable number of respondents randomly sampled to reflect the sentiment of the city.

Forty-seven percent of the respondents felt that the crime rate in Davao City has been decreasing, as compared to only 20 percent who felt the same trend in all of Mindanao.

The polls also showed people’s willingness to cooperate with the city’s mostly landmark legislation banning firecrackers, liquor, smoking; imposing garbage segregation and reducing the speed limit of vehicles.

Among the respondents, 26 percent claimed their income was not enough to cover their daily spending; 41 percent said their income was just enough and only 13 percent said they still got to save a portion of their income. Almost half or 49 percent of the respondents felt their income would just stay the same in the next three months; 29 percent said they would be earning less than what they would spend; while 20 percent say they would still generate savings from their income.

Ninety-two percent of the respondents expressed high optimism over the economic growth in the city; and among these optimists, 87 percent thought it would be easier to find jobs in Davao City than anywhere in the country, while 85 percent believe it’s easier for ordinary people to look for jobs in the city than anywhere else.

Although more than 90 percent of those polled claimed to have enjoyed most of the city’s infrastructure, (the survey was made before the rotating brownouts in the city), 86 percent of those polled feel the “widening gap” between the rich and the poor.

When asked where they placed themselves in the poverty index, 82 percent perceived themselves to be on the poverty line, with only three percent claiming not to be poor, while 15 percent claimed they were poor.

Most of those being polled have completed high school, some have attained a college education, 51 percent claimed to have a job, 36 percent claimed they had a job before although they were out of the labor force at the time of the survey.

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