Trillanes questions Pulse Asia’s ‘invalid’ survey method

Antonio Trillanes IV —EDWIN BACASMAS

 Senator Antonio Trillanes IV has questioned the alleged “invalid” sampling design method being used  by Pulse Asia in its surveys.

On Friday, Trillanes said: “That is clearly a sampling design error and, therefore, invalid,”

Trillanes was apparently reacting to a Pulse Asia survey released earlier Friday that shows President Rodrigo Duterte’s high approval and trust ratings.

The survey, conducted from June 15 to 21, posts an approval rating of 88 percent and trust rating of 87 percent for Mr. Duterte, making him the most approved and trusted official of the country.

READ: Pulse Asia’s June survey: 87% of Filipinos trust Duterte

“Pulse Asia, historically, keeps on insisting to use respondents of Davao City to generalize or represent the population for the whole Mindanao,” Trillanes noted.

“This is not valid anymore because the respondents of the other regions are clearly not as fanatical to or fearful of Duterte as the Davaoeños are,” added Trillanes, a staunch critic of Duterte.

Duterte was a long time mayor of Davao City before he became president in 2016.

Poll was before ‘God is stupid’ remark

But Dr. Ana Maria Tabunda, Research Director of Pulse Asia, denied Trillanes’ allegations.

“Only 70 respondents of our sample of 430 respondents in Mindanao are from Davao City. The rest are from 19 other cities and municipalities in Mindanao spread proportionally across the five regions in Mindanao,” she said in a text message to Inquirer.net.

“The crucial difference, I think, between our survey results and that of the other group is that out field work was completed before the blasphemy was uttered, while that of the other group was done after the blasphemy was uttered,” Tabunda then pointed out.

She was apparently referring to the survey of the Social Weather Stations (SWS), which conducted its own survey from June 27 to 30.

Unlike Pulse Asia, however, the SWS survey showed an 11-percent decline in Duterte’s net satisfaction rating from 56 percent in March to 45 percent in June.

READ: Duterte’s net satisfaction rating drops by 11 points in Q2 — SWS

/kga