Pollsters fooling us that most Filipinos back belligerent stand vs China

POLLING firms Social Weather Stations (SWS), Pulse Asia and the now the dubious OCTA Research have been fooling us that most Filipinos back the Marcos administration’s belligerent stance toward China in the South China Sea disputes.

The reality is that we just don’t know what Filipinos’ majority stand is because of basic flaws in their polling methodology.

We estimate that at best 16 to 19 percent of Filipinos either oppose the stance, or are against it, with 65 percent either feeling that they don’t know enough about it to reply.

A basic principle of opinion polling is that the respondents should be aware of the issue they are being asked to give their opinions on. A poll on whether Filipinos are taking the drug sildenafil would be useless and flawed.

OCTA’s 2023 polling for instance asks: “How much do you agree with the response of Marcos Jr. regarding the territorial disputes in the West Philippine Sea and China?” Similarly, Social Weather Stations asked its respondents in its 2021 survey whether the country should strengthen its military capacity, presumably to confront China, over the West Philippine Sea disputes. Pulse Asia in 2024 also asked its respondents whether it agrees that the Philippines should “remove China’s Coast Guard and militia from Philippine territory.”

Because of these flawed polls, defense secretary as well as Philippine Coast Guard and Navy officials have been claiming majority of Filipinos are supporting their belligerent stance against China, and are even close to advocating an armed response, of course, if the US backs us.

Few Filipinos I can confidently claim know what the “West Philippine Sea” is which Benigno Aquino III invented in 2012, as the part of the South China Sea where our exclusive economic zone as well as the Kalayaan Island Group and Panatag Shoal are located. No country recognizes it, it’s not in the maps of the International Hydrographic Organization that defines all of the world’s oceans and seas. Many Filipinos confuse it with the Philippine Sea in the eastern part of the archipelago, named two centuries ago.

Aquino III

Aquino III’s move to invent a “West Philippine Sea” in 2012 was a sleek propaganda trick to brainwash people’s minds that that part of the waters are incontrovertibly ours since it is the Philippine Sea. This denies the reality that several other nations, more importantly China, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia, are claiming huge parts of it.

The propaganda trick has indeed worked quite well. Not a single one of the pollsters explain what the “West Philippine Sea” is, so that its Philippine ownership of it is undebatable, as Philippine sovereignty over Sulu, the Visayas and Sibuyan Sea (between Luzon and the Visayas). Respondents, of course, would agree with whatever means necessary to “protect” the West Philippine Sea, since it is “obviously” ours.

I don’t think respondents would be backing Marcos’ belligerent stance, so if they were asked: “China and Vietnam have claimed sovereignty since at least over 200 years ago over island groups in the South China Sea, which we since 2009 claim is within our exclusive economic zone in which we have certain rights to exploit its natural resources. Should we insist on our claim to the extent of enforcing it with our military might, helped by the US?”

Ask your gardener or your taxi driver — or even I bet the officials of the three pollsters — where the West Philippine Sea is to realize what I am talking about. Ask them what is our basis for claiming certain islands in that sea, and what is China’s basis.

Most if not 95 percent of Filipinos are not aware what the “West Philippine Sea disputes” are. Even the writer of our editorial page and certainly our editorial cartoonist don’t. Even the Social Weather Station pollsters do not know what the dispute is about really. This was revealed when it asked its respondents last year, “The Philippine government is not doing enough to assert its rights to the country’s territories in the West Philippine Sea as stipulated in the 2016 decision of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.”

Misinformation

This is misinformation. It wasn’t the Permanent Court of Arbitration set up in 1899 and which 122 nations recognize that made the decision. It was merely a five-man panel of arbitrators that issued the 2016 July decision on the Philippine arbitration suit against China.

That decision didn’t even rule illegal China’s sovereignty claims on island groups in the South China Sea. It merely declared China’s so-called nine-dash line illegal. But that line wasn’t the basis for China’s claims, but its sovereignty exercised for 200 years at least over these as its “outlying archipelago,” just as the Hawaiian islands are the US’ outlying archipelago.

How can a survey be legitimate if it asks respondents to reply to erroneous questions?

While the principle that respondents must reasonably know what the issue they are being asked about is absolutely required for opinion surveys, even the most professional pollsters several times have made such a mistake.

In polls conducted in the US in 2020 on “defunding the police” following George Floyd’s death and the subsequent protests, many respondents, when asked if they supported defunding the police, were unaware of the nuanced positions behind the term. Some assumed it meant completely eliminating police forces, which led to a more negative response than would have been the case if they had understood the broader range of possible policy changes, such as reallocating police funds to community services. Pollsters did not clarify what “defunding” entailed, causing a misrepresentation of public opinion on the matter.

Climate change

Another case involved climate change surveys. While many Americans expressed concern about climate change, support for specific policy solutions, such as carbon taxes, was lower. This disparity occurred because many respondents may not have had a deep understanding of the science or the long-term impacts of climate policies. For example, a Gallup poll in 2017 revealed that a large portion of respondents favored government action on climate change, but fewer supported specific, cost-involved policies. This suggests that people were reacting to the idea of addressing climate change in general terms, without fully grasping the details of what specific solutions would require.

During the “Brexit” (for the UK to leave the European Union) referendum in 2016, many polls leading up to the vote suggested a close race between the “Remain” and “Leave” camps. However, many voters lacked an understanding of the complex implications of leaving the European Union. Pollsters did not sufficiently account for the lack of detailed knowledge among respondents about the long-term consequences of Brexit, which contributed to a discrepancy between pre-vote poll results and the actual outcome. Many voters, especially those in less economically advantaged groups, did not have all the facts on how Brexit would affect trade, immigration and the economy, leading to shifts in voting behavior close to the referendum.

We discovered the huge error of SWS’ reporting that 41 percent of “Filipinos” were supporting Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment, only because it reported that its original respondents numbered 2,160. Out of this, 47 percent were aware of the issue, and their replies were calculated. However, 53 percent weren’t aware of the issue, and were struck out of the sample. Using this number, the most probable reality is that 19 percent supported the impeachment and 16 were against it. This result even had a margin of error of plus or negative three points, which means the pro-Sara replies could be the reverse, at 19 percent, and anti-Sara 16 percent.

First time

That was the very first time that the SWS — the two other pollsters never — reported its original number of respondents. This bolsters my suspicion that in certain polls, they concealed crucial info that resulted in erroneous findings.

If we use the SWS’ 2,016 respondents in the Sara poll, and use the pro- and anti-Sara replies as proxies for the anti-China and pro-China replies, we can dare estimate the probable number of Filipinos that agree or do not agree with Marcos’ belligerent stance, which would be in both cases in the range of 16 to 19 percent. Very rough as this calculation can be, it is nowhere in the three pollsters’ claims of a high of 93 percent (made by SWS) support for this administration’s belligerent stance toward China in the South China Sea territorial disputes.

And to think that these errors — deliberate or not — were believed by our gullible security officials, and even by Marcos, to claim that Filipinos are overwhelmingly supporting their belligerent stance toward China. What a tragedy if we go to war against China because of pollsters’ lies.

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Pollsters fooling us that most Filipinos back belligerent stand vs China
Source: Breaking News PH