Polls tell about others

From long ago, before becoming a researcher, I remember a Jules Feiffer cartoon of people watching television, where one of them says, “I like the opinion polls, in order to find out what to think.” Maybe the joker is a conformist, or maybe a contrarian. In any case, he does not have a mind of his own, but lets his stance depend on the stances of others; that’s not improper.

Opinion polling is a science, and also an art, of mass communication. What it does is ask people—a representative sample of a group of interest—about themselves: what they believe, what they know, what they expect, what they personally have gone through and are going through, what they think is happening around them, what they expect to happen, and so forth. On such questions, the respondents know the answers, and hopefully will share them.

The communication is from the respondents to the pollsters, not vice versa. A pollster’s work is not to tell; it is to ask. There is no “right” or “wrong” answer to a question. An answer might be evasive. It might be tentative. It might be too sensitive to share with a (strange) interviewer; that’s fine. Any response, even a nonresponse, is okay. What a pollster really aims for is honesty.

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There are polls about the reach of a presidential State of the Nation Address (Sona). The archives of Social Weather Stations (SWS) contain six national polls about past Sonas: in 2025 and 2024, under President Marcos, in 2017 and 2016, under President Rodrigo Duterte, and in 2012 and 2011, under President Noynoy Aquino. All were done in the third quarter of the year, and refer to the Sona of the previous July.

Those who had heard or read anything about these Sonas, regardless of the medium, were just below half in the time of Mr. Marcos, compared to about three-fourths in the times of Duterte and Aquino. This indicates that general public interest in the Sona has fallen from previous administrations; but let us see what the forthcoming September 2026 survey finds. Our surveys haven’t asked what specific matters in the Sonas are the most interesting. I don’t recall ever polling Sona listeners/readers to evaluate it.

There are polls of the extent to which people expect presidential promises to be kept. What SWS has done in several national polls (all archived of course), is ask whether (a) all or nearly all, (b) most, (c) a few, or (d) none or almost none of a president’s promises will be fulfilled (matutupad, in Filipino), in the respondent’s opinion. This refers to generic promises, rather than to any specific promises made in a Sona. I will summarize them by scoring the “all” plus “most” percentage versus the “few” plus “none” percentage.

SWS did only two polls about such promises in the time of Aquino, one each in 2010 and 2011. The all/most percentage was a minority in both polls. In 2010Q3, 41 percent said all/most of his promises would be kept, versus 58 percent that said few/none of them would be kept. A year later, in 2011Q3, the all/most group fell to 31 percent, while the few/none group rose to 68 percent. In the remainder of Aquino’s term, there were no SWS surveys on this.

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There were nine polls about presidential promises in the time of Duterte—one in 2016, two in 2017, one in 2018, two in 2019, none in 2020 (the COVID-19 year), one in 2021, and two in 2022. The all/most percentage dominated in seven of those polls, starting at 56 in 2016 and 52 in 2017Q1. It fell to a minority 35 in 2017Q3 and 46 in 2018. Afterward, it ranged from 52 to 58 in 2019-2022, and peaked at 67 in 2022Q2 as Duterte’s term was ending. This is not to say that any specific promises of Duterte were kept; it only means that most people expected his generic promises to be kept.

So far, there have been seven polls under Mr. Marcos about how much of his promises would be kept—one in 2022, none in 2023, four in 2024, and two in 2025. The all/most percentage was at 48 in 2022Q3, which was the highest in the series; then, in the six polls of 2024-25, it ranged from 21 to 27 percent only. (I thank Lowelyn Dalisay Historia, SWS Data Archives and Library assistant, for looking up the Sona-related polls cited here.)

To me, the most important topics for new polls are the trial of Duterte at the International Criminal Court, and the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte at the Senate. If I may quote myself: “It is clear from repeated SWS polls over the past few years that Filipinos: (1) have been quite unhappy about the extrajudicial killings during the drug war under the Rodrigo Duterte administration, and (2) want VP Sara to face squarely the many corruption-complaints against her.” (see “Bad and good developments,” 4/25/26)

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mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph.