Duterte bags 'very good' satisfaction rating, SWS says
By CNN Philippines Staff
Updated 17:15 PM PHT Thu, October 6, 2016
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) — About 7 in 10 Filipinos (76 percent) are "satisfied" with President Rodrigo Duterte's performance less than 100 days into his six-year term, a non-commissioned Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey revealed.
In the first SWS satisfaction poll of his administration, the President scored a +64 net satisfaction rating, marking the second highest start for a presidency since Fidel Ramos on September 1992 (+66).
About 13 percent of Filipinos are "undecided," while 11 percent are "dissatisfied" with the President.
"[W]e can see this just starting from the elections and one of the things that I studied over the course of the campaign is how the President was very effective in tapping on what I call a latent anxiety, and that anxiety is coming from a lot of issues that people face but we tend to forget because it's not obvious. Drugs and criminality [are] the very obvious manifestation of that," sociologist Nicole Curato told CNN Philippines Senior Anchor Pinky Webb on "The Source".
Respondents were asked: "Maaari po bang pakisabi ninyo kung gaano kayo nasisiyahan o hindi nasisiyahan sa pagganap ng tungkulin ni RODRIGO DUTERTE bilang Presidente ng Pilipinas. Kayo ba ay lubos na nasisiyahan, medyo nasisiyahan, hindi tiyak kung nasisiyahan o hindi, medyo hindi nasisiyahan, lubos na hindi nasisiyahan, o wala pa kayong narinig o nabasa kahit na kailan tungkol kay RODRIGO DUTERTE?"
[Translation: Please tell me how satisfied or dissatisfied you are in the performance of RODRIGO DUTERTE as President of the Philippines. Are you very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, undecided if satisfied or dissatisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, very dissatisfied, or you have not ever heard or read anything about RODRIGO DUTERTE?]
SWS conducted its poll from September 24 to 27 through face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults, 300 each from Metro Manila, the rest of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The survey has a + 3 percent error margin for the national average, and + 6 percent error margin each for Metro Manila, the rest of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.
When grouped according to region, a large majority (88 percent) of residents from Mindanao were satisfied with the President. This was also the case for those in the Visayas (75 percent), Metro Manila (74 percent) and the rest of Luzon (70 percent).
Those from urban (74 percent) and rural (78 percent) areas expressed fairly equal satisfaction. A majority of those in all socio-economic classes were satisfied, with those in the D and E classes both 76 percent, and the combined ABC classes at 69 percent.
By gender, 79 percent of men and 72 percent of women were satisfied with Duterte. The figure was also high among different age groups:
18-24 years old: 72 percent
25-34 years old: 80 percent
25-44 years old: 80 percent
45-54 years old: 74 percent
55 and above: 70 percent
"What I'm increasingly starting to learn here is that the people give him unqualified support because our paradigm now is we're at war. This is a war," Curato pointed out.
"So if you try to remember, let's say in the U.S., when they attacked Iraq, when they attacked Afghanistan, there are ways in which people are silenced when they critique it. They say it's unpatriotic; it's disrespectful to the troops. So in a way there's a parallelism here. You have your police officers putting their lives on the line and then you start critiquing them? You don't do that," she added.
