Senator Santiago hits exclusion from surveys

Presidential candidate Sen.  Miriam Defensor-Santiago claimed preelection surveys have excluded her name from the list of candidates, blaming this for her consistent bottom-ranking among the five presidential aspirants.

Speaking for the first time on the results of voter preference surveys, Santiago said reports have reached her that some pollsters excluded her name in the survey forms.

She claimed the survey results were a kind of “mind-conditioning” done by her moneyed rivals and their wealthy supporters.

“No one believes surveys anymore because, in the first place, it’s all over social media that my name has been removed from some of the forms used in these surveys so that respondents would be forced to vote for other candidates,” Santiago said in a statement.

She said several persons who claim to have been respondents for preelection surveys reported that they had to write down her name on the survey form because it was not among the options provided.

Others chose “undecided” instead when they did not find Santiago’s name among the presidential choices, she added.