Where in the world is Grace Poe? And why doesn’t anyone seem to really care anymore?
As Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s rise continues in the surveys, his two more established rivals seek refuge in the supposed strength of their organizations and political machinery. But where does that leave Duterte’s third major rival, Senator Poe, the former frontrunner before the potty-mouthed mayor captured the imagination of the people, as reflected in the mainstream polls?
I still recall Valenzuela Mayor Rex Gatchalian, Poe’s spokesman, predicting a 10-percent “bounce” in the senator’s survey numbers if the Supreme Court rules in her favor in the citizenship and residency cases filed against her. Gatchalian’s prediction still hasn’t happened, weeks after Poe—already the survey frontrunner at the time—secured favorable verdicts from the tribunal.
What happened to “Amazing” Grace? Is there still a way (and time enough) for her to retake the survey lead and to sustain her once-great run all the way to the May 9 finish line?
To be fair, the latest Pulse Asia survey still has Poe firmly in second place, with 25 percent behind Duterte’s 32 percent. Duterte may be the choice of a little less than one-third of all the voters polled, but Poe was still picked by a solid fourth of the Pulse respondents.
(With his 20 percent, Vice President Jejomar Binay retains his apparently undiminished base of one-fifth of the voting population. Administration candidate Mar Roxas, at 18 percent, has less than that, maintaining his last-place position among the four major candidates.)
The difference, of course, is that both Binay and Roxas can claim to have party organizations and machinery that will, they insist, allow them to make an end run in the dying moments of the race and win it all. Poe, who is like Duterte in her lack of such an organization, cannot make a similar claim.
In fact, ever since Poe got her Supreme Court rulings, she seems to have dropped off entirely from the headlines and the national consciousness. Indeed, the last time I remember Poe hogging the headlines was in the aftermath of the March 20 presidential debate in Cebu City, where she performed very well. After the April 3 Supreme Court rulings, Poe seemed to level off—coinciding with the time when Duterte started making noise, literally and figuratively, cussing his way to the top of the survey heap.
Even after Duterte famously shot himself in the foot with his recollections of the rape-killing of an Australian missionary in 1989, I don’t recall Poe capitalizing on the one issue that seemed tailor-made for her, as the only woman in the Big Four. Poe did denounce Duterte, but perhaps because everyone else who didn’t like the mayor did the same, her reaction was buried in the ensuing avalanche of real—or feigned—condemnation.
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Athletes and their coaches have a theory about not “peaking too soon.” According to this theory, competitors should husband their strength for a final, decisive push at the very end, keeping pace with the main pack until opponents tire out and can no longer offer any resistance when they go for the finish.
I don’t know if Poe has already peaked. I do know that, as Duterte was making his upward move, he appears to have gotten the most number of survey “votes” from Poe.
Binay, Poe’s early victim in the survey derby, also shed points to Duterte, even if he has kept his head, overall, above the 20-plus mark. Roxas has basically remained where he is, failing to get out of the teens even as he keeps repeating his mantra about the “real survey” taking place on May 9.
But Poe has lost, on average, eight to 10 percentage points to Duterte in the past weeks, ever since The Standard’s resident pollster Junie Laylo first recorded the Davao mayor’s rise as frontrunner in his last survey, conducted right after Holy Week. And, this late in the race, that can’t be good news for the senator.
A top Poe adviser, however, still thinks Poe has better chances than either Binay or Roxas to beat the Duterte juggernaut. This is his analysis:
“She seems to be retaining her core support of 25 percent, despite the daily black propaganda battering which must have taken away from the ‘soft’ votes when she led in the low 30s, before Duterte’s momentum run, which took more away from Binay and Mar,” said this source. “[Duterte’s] latest foot-in-mouth braggadocio will now hurt him somewhat, and GP stands to regain the soft votes, especially the women’s vote, more than the other two who seem dead in the water, even if they distribute money.”
“May laban pa kami,” he added. “She could still wind up as destiny’s child.”
I guess, like Roxas keeps saying, we shall see when the real survey takes place in a little over two weeks. Then we’ll know if Grace Poe is for real or just a blinding flash in the political pan.
