Open Letter Consisting of Questions to the President of Major Survey Firms

Date Published: May 23, 2025

This open letter contains a series of questions addressed to the leadership of major political survey firms in the Philippines. The questions aim to probe the credibility, transparency, and methodology of pre-election surveys conducted in the months leading up to the May 2025 national elections. Many of these questions remain unanswered and deserve public scrutiny.

Possible interview questions to them in the future:

Given the actual election results, how do you explain the consistent underestimation of Bam, Kiko, and Marcoleta’s rankings in your surveys over the past eight months? What factors might have contributed to the limited change of top 12 rankings in your reported results during the 60-day campaign period?

The surveys consistently placed Bam, Kiko, and Marcoleta outside the magic 12. Marcoleta is even far from the magic 12.

You, Pulse Asia, pointed out that the last inaccurate survey was due to a three-week gap. If the delay was that long, then why was there a need to publish it so close to the May 12 election? Why was there a three-week delay?

Can you explain your organizational structure? How do you tabulate the individual surveys? Is there a tabulator per region or per city, or are the individual survey results sent to a centralized system for unified tabulation?

Why didn’t you publish who sponsored each survey and for what cost?

If a private individual sponsored the survey, why do you need to publicize the result of all other aspirants? Are you mind-conditioning the public by telling them that many have a small chance of winning because they are outside the top 15?

Did you ask permission from other senatorial aspirants whether their name, rankings, and percentage preference will be published in every survey? Or do you simply make an assumption since it’s been the practice in the past three decades? Do you think you evaded the privacy of other aspirants by publishing their name online with their ranking and voter preference?

Why don’t you just send the survey result to the private sponsor, and what’s the need for its publication? If you want to help other aspirants make strategic political decisions, you could have put your email in the survey result so the aspirants can request it individually.

When a private individual sponsors a survey, and if they don't like the result, do they have the option to not publish it online? Or will they only know the result once you publish it?

Is there a case before where an actual politician or candidate sponsored the survey? If yes, do you not consider it a conflict of interest?

What is the purpose of publishing your political survey, if even the day before or during the day of election, the participants can still change their minds?

You mentioned that there is a survey conducted just a few days before election. Why only publish the result two weeks after election? Are you trying to save face because the pre election survey and the actual May 2025 are different. With some candidates that are totally different like Kiko, Bam, Marcoleta and Willie.

What can you say about the statement of the late Miriam Defensor Santiago that survey firms are like kingmakers?

How do you choose the participants of the survey? How many personnel are in the field to do the actual survey?

Did you receive a bribe to place certain aspirants in the top 12, even if they shouldn’t be there? National elections can be rigged, as seen in the "Hello Garci" case. How confident are you that the survey results at the ground level are not manipulated?

The survey consistently ranks in consecutive weeks in the past eight months the candidates: Bong Revilla, Willie Revillame, Ben Tulfo, Manny Pacquiao, and Abby Binay in the magic 12, and yet they didn’t win. Willie Revillame didn’t even make it to the top 20.

There are 42,046 barangays in the Philippines, and you only have 2,500 participants. 42,046 ÷ 2,500 = 17.

It’s like 17 barangays are represented by only one person. How do you choose that one person? Are they students, voters, tambay, workers, etc.?

Why didn’t you publish the survey breakdown per region, per province, or per city, so the public could compare them after the election?

Are you willing to allow a 3rd-party audit firm to audit a sample of your 2,500 participants? Similar concept to the random manual audit of COMELEC. The 3rd-party audit firm can audit 10% of 2,500 to determine whether their preference is their actual voting preference.

Do you think that the survey firms this 2025 are an epic fail? As one of the presidents of these survey firms, do you think survey firms still have credibility in the 2028 election?

If you and your tabulators will be summoned by a competent court for cross-examination and truth-finding, are you willing to attend? If no, why not?

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I apologize in advance for being brutally honest with the above questions. My goal is to seek the truth and for them to reflect on what could have gone wrong in their 2025 surveys. They may have manipulated the minds of many Filipinos by consistently publishing their unquestioned, unregulated, and unverified survey results over the past three decades.

I hope those questions above will be answered by them in the future.

Kind regards,

Jonelle Peter Muñoz

A private citizen seeking the truth