Pacquiao downed by stand on LGBT

Manny Pacquiao smiles to the media during an interview inside his home in Hollywood, CA on Tuesday, 5 May 2015.  REM ZAMORA

His view that homosexuals are “worse than animals” may be costing Sarangani Rep. Manny Pacquiao the senatorial election.

Just two weeks after he shot his mouth off during an interview, the world boxing champion fell out of the winning circle in the latest Pulse Asia voter preference poll for the senatorial race.

“There was a big drop in his numbers in the latest survey,” Ronald Holmes, president of Pulse Asia, said.

“It appears that his comments on the same-sex marriage issue had hurt his numbers, because it was widely reported in the media,” he said.

The Bible-quoting Pacquiao suffered the biggest drop of 12.1 percentage points among the runners during the period covered by the poll, Feb. 15 to 20, during which he was getting knocked around here and abroad for saying that “men who mate with men and women who mate with women are worse than animals.”

Preference for Pacquiao dropped to 34.8 percent from 46.9 percent in January, pushing him from between the 8th and 10th spots to the last spot or between the 11th and 14th spots for the 12 vacant Senate seats at stake in the election.

The top two spots in the poll are held by Sen. Vicente Sotto III and former Sen. Panfilo Lacson.

According to the results of the poll, 63.6 percent of the respondents would have voted for Sotto while 60.2 percent would have voted for Lacson had the senatorial election been held during the survey period.

9 to 10 candidates

On average, the respondents had already picked nine to 10 senatorial candidates to vote for on May 9.

Following Sotto and Lacson on the probable winners’ list are former Sen. Francis Pangilinan (54.1 percent), Sen. Ralph Recto (53.4 percent) and Senate President Franklin Drilon (52.4 percent).

Other candidates in the possible winners’ circle are former Rep. Juan Miguel Zubiri (48.5 percent), former Justice Secretary Leila de Lima (45.3 percent), Sen. Sergio Osmeña III (43.7 percent), former Sen. Richard Gordon (42.6 percent), and Valenzuela City Rep. Sherwin Gatchalian (41.2 percent).

Trailing them are former Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) chief Joel Villanueva (39.1 percent), Sen. Teofisto Guingona III (36.7 percent), and former Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros (36.2 percent).

Of all the possible winning candidates, Villanueva has the most significant increase of 8 percentage points from 31.1 percent in January. Reports from Inquirer Research

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