Turning out the vote
- May 2007 elections, Philippine politics -
Something’s been puzzling me the last two weeks.
Immediately after the elections, the Commission on Elections estimated that anywhere between 65 and 85 percent of registered voters had cast their ballots. (As an estimate, offered by a possibly innumerate Comelec chairman, the figure is too vague to be truly useful. Given 45 million voters, a 20-percent range means Benjamin Abalos could have been off by as many as 9 million voters.)
On the eve of the elections, the Comelec had forecast an 83-percent turnout, based on the 2004 vote.
This was, more or less, the “forecast” one could conclude from a Social Weather Stations survey, which found that 86 percent of survey respondents said they were likely to vote. It was this survey, too, which led me to conclude that Loren Legarda, consistently enjoying ratings of around 60 percent, would be the first person to earn over 20 million votes in Philippine election history.
