With less than two weeks left before the May 9 elections, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte has maintained his lead in the race to Malacañang, the latest Pulse Asia survey released on Friday showed.
Nationwide, 33 percent of 4,000 respondents who are registered voters would support the feisty mayor.
Virtually tied at second place were Sen. Grace Poe with 22 percent and Liberal Party standard-bearer Mar Roxas with 20 percent.
Vice President Jejomar Binay placed third with 18 percent and Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago remained at the rear with 2 percent.
The poll survey, commissioned by ABS-CBN, had a margin of error of plus-or-minus 1.5 percentage points. It was conducted on April 19-24, amid a backlash concerning a short video of Duterte’s scandalous “rape joke” during a campaign sortie, which went viral online and was carried both by local and international media.
The latest scores of Duterte and Binay are both a point down from 34 percent and 19 percent, respectively, in a previous commissioned poll conducted on April 12-17. Roxas’ score climbed 2 points, while the ratings of Poe and Santiago remained unchanged.
Pulse Asia also found that Duterte had a commanding lead in Mindanao (58 percent) and was the preferred candidate by socioeconomic groups from Classes ABC (37 percent) and Class D (33 percent).
Poe dominated in the rest of Luzon (29 percent) while she (26 percent) shared the top spot with Duterte (34 percent) in Metro Manila and Class E (24 percent and 31 percent, respectively).
In the Visayas, Roxas (37 percent) and Duterte (32 percent) were the top choice.
In the vice presidential race, Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. remains on top with one in every three respondents (31 percent) saying they would vote for him had the elections been held last week.
In second solo place is Camarines Sur Rep. Leni Robredo with 26 percent, followed by Sen. Francis Escudero (18 percent) and Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano (15 percent), who are statistically tied in third place.
Following them are Sen. Antonio Trillanes (3 percent) and Sen. Gringo Honasan (2 percent).
Across areas and classes, Marcos led in Metro Manila (45 percent) and in Luzon outside Metro Manila (38 percent), as well as among class ABC (38 percent) and class D (31 percent), Pulse Asia said in a statement.
Robredo was the top choice in the Visayas (39 percent), while she and Cayetano shared the lead in Mindanao (27 percent and 31 percent, respectively).
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