Drilon leads winning senators with 18.6M votes

Senate President Franklin Drilon. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

Senate President Franklin Drilon is the front-runner in the 2016 senatorial elections, leading the pack of  12 new lawmakers who will be proclaimed at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) on Thursday afternoon.

As per the final national canvass report released by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) hours before the proclamation, Drilon got 18,607,391 votes.

READ: Drilon leads Senate race in Comelec partial, official count

In second place is former Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) chairman Joel Villanueva with 18,459,222 votes. Reelectionist Vicente Sotto III got 17,200,371 votes, placing him in third place. Former senators Panfilo Lacson and Richard Gordon placed fourth and fifth with 16,926,152 and 16,719,322 votes, respectively.

Completing the “Magic 12” are:

-Juan Miguel Zubiri: 16,119,165

-Emmanuel “Manny” Pacquiao: 16,050,546

-Ana Theresia Hontiveros: 15,915,213

-Francis Pangilinan: 15,955,949

-Sherwin Gatchalian: 14,953,768

-Ralph Recto: 14,271,868

-Leila De Lima: 14,144,020

For the 2016 elections, there were 55,736,801 registered voters. However, only 44, 979,151 actually cast their votes.

READ: Comelec to proclaim 12 senatorial winners today


The Comelec finished the canvassing of the senators and party-list groups Wednesday night. A total of 166 certificates of canvass were admitted by the Comelec en banc, sitting as National Board of Canvassers. RAM/rga