Broken Instruments: The Survey Failure That Left Even Winners Stunned

By Vincent R. Pozon

The Failure of Measurement

On election day, after I voted, I hurried to tend to my mother’s wake. As the last condolences were offered, I spoke with friends from the campaign. We were calm, even buoyant—the latest surveys placed our candidate comfortably within the winning circle, ranking as high as fifth. The final poll was only days old, if you can call that old. "Sure win" —- we had the assurance.

After just an hour, I was stunned.

It isn’t that we lost. People lose. It’s that we were blindsided.

I have long defended surveys. I bristle when politicians sneer at data simply because it displeases them, careless of the damage done to institutions built on decades of discipline and rigor.

Putting Surveys back on the Pedestal

“YOU WOULD THINK THE EDUCATED would have respect for research. Anybody who needs to sell anything depends on the reliability of the dipstick. We rely on its precision for everything else in our lives, why not during elections?”

Our BrewVincent R. Pozon

I am no researcher—only someone with half a century of needing and reading surveys, obedient to their nudges and advice. When launching products, assessing public perceptions, we turn to these numbers as a kind of secular compass. Not infallible, but steady. Not prophetic, but grounded.

Surveys provide the benchmarks against which we weigh the final COMELEC count. Now that role is invaluable—especially in a country where political delirium is constant and often rabid.

Every election year, research is questioned and challenged; every election acquits it and attests to the reliability of the science.

Until now.

For decades, we have trusted survey research to offer clarity where emotion, misinformation, and disinformation thrive.

And it was reliable. As Pauline Macaraeg noted in an Esquire Philippines article: “In the 2013 and 2010 elections, all 12 senators topped the last SWS survey conducted prior to election day won the actual race. In 2016 though, only Sergio Osmena III lost the elections out of the 12 bets that topped the last poll in 2016.

"Pulse Asia’s surveys showed a more striking picture. All 12 senatorial hopefuls who topped the final surveys conducted before each election day from 2010 to 2016 won the race.”

That merits repeating: all candidates who topped the last surveys won.

The last survey before the May 13th, 2019 election predicted who would most likely make it. Pulse Asia drew a line under the viable names; no one outside the line won.

So starting 2024, we watched the numbers. We pored over them, month after month. We dissected and drilled down. Sumandal sa pader, sa siyensya.

I write now not from mere disappointment. This strikes at the foundation of how we are meant to regard the instrument. This was not a simple polling miss. This was a collapse of Nate Silver proportions.

In this election, the instrument failed.

Not by a hairline, but wildly, by vast and consequential degrees.

Some long-shot candidates landed near the top. Others who felt secure slid hard. It wasn’t just the losers who were blindsided — the winners looked stunned.

Some have said that a generational surge slipped past the sensors. Voter behavior changed beneath the surface, and none of the country’s leading survey institutions caught a scent of it.

This is the crux: Not one survey firm signaled uncertainty. Not one said: Something is happening -- interpret with caution.

A standard defense is that surveys are mere snapshots, and that things could change in a month's time. True enough. But at least two surveys concluded just two days before the vote. So that refuge does not hold.

The question now is not whether the youth turned out in unexpected numbers. They probably did. As Akbayan’s astonishing showing in the party-list race revealed—a result nowhere near where months of surveys placed it. (I admit a stake in that story, having lent some thought to their messaging).

Month after month till just days before election day – wala kayong naamoy?

What is the point of all this technology, if it cannot smell when the wind is changing?

Even Comelec Chairperson George Garcia, speaking on May 15, offered a caution: he said he is not trying to tarnish the credibility or the effectiveness of surveys, but noted that pre-election polls should not be considered as totally accurate as there are different factors — like the limited scope of polling firms."

Fair enough. But what, precisely, is this “limited scope”? Without a clearer picture of what was captured—and what may have been missed—it is hard to know whether this was a truly unpredictable wave or something the instruments are, today, not built to detect.

If a generation can move without being seen, what else can? A rebellion? Societal collapse?

We do not ask pollsters to predict the future. But we do expect them to know when they can no longer see clearly.

And after this? Trust can not return easily. The next time a survey is cited, expect skeptical eyebrows. Expect pushback. The authority of research has been bruised—perhaps more deeply than it realizes. It will take more than talk of “margins of error” to mend that.

In business, when market research fails—when sentiment is misread and products flop—we investigate the method. In politics, we must be no less exacting.

To this day, we have yet to hear a clear explanation from the industry.

Perhaps next time— and I say this only half in jest—we’d be better off commissioning university polls.

Vincent R. Pozon

After a year of college, Koyang entered advertising, and there he stayed for half a century, in various agencies, multinational and local. He is known for aberrant strategic successes (e.g., Clusivol’s ‘Bawal Magkasakit’, Promil’s ‘The Gifted Child’, RiteMED’s ‘May RiteMED ba nito?', VP Binay's 'Ganito Kami sa Makati', JV Ejercito's 'The Good One', Akbayan's 'Pag Mahal Mo, Akbayan Mo')). He is chairman of Estima, an ad agency dedicated to helping local industrialists, causes and candidates. He is co-founder and counselor for advertising, public relations, and crisis management of Caucus, Inc., a multi-discipline consultancy firm. He can be reached through vpozon@me.com.