Angeles City”•Barely a week before the local elections, Angeles City mayoral candidates Alex Cauguiran and Carmelo Lazatin Jr. are statistically tied in a recent survey conducted by the former’s Kambilan Party.
Irene Mae Manabat, Kambilan Da Reng Abe Party spokesperson, said Cauguiran got 35 percent of the vote in the latest poll dated April 20 and 21, with Lazatin at 37 percent.
Vice Mayor Bryan Nepomuceno, the third mayoralty candidate, slid down to 24 percent, with the undecided voters at 4 percent, said Manabat, who added that Kambilan trained and commissioned a number of volunteers students as numerators.
“From a statistician’s point of view, the two top candidates are statistically tied,” said Manabat, an academic researcher by profession and a holder of a Doctorate degree in Business Management from the Systems Plus College Foundation.
“Lazatin’s votes are in a plateau, so the rise or fall (of his votes) are negligible. Nepomuceno is on an irreversible downward trajectory, while Cauguiran, most probably, will rake in the undecided voters while solidifying his loyal forces in the endgame,” she added.
Cauguiran is running under the 34,000-strong Kambilan Party affiliated with incumbent Pampanga Gov. Lilia Pineda. Romeo Dizon
The poll result showed Cauguiran ranked first in 13 barangays, Manabat said, with the survey having a margin of error of 1.8 percent and conducted in 33 barangays with 3,000 random respondents proportional to voters per barangay.
The surveyors ensured a random method in a community with household intervals of at least seven houses, where the question asked was: “If you are voting on May 13, who is your choice for Mayor?”
In a previous Kambilan poll conducted from December 12 to 14, 2018, Nepomuceno was at the top at 39 percent, Lazatin at 31 percent and Cauguiran at merely 8 percent.
From the results of another survey conducted on February 2 to 5 in the city’s 33 barangays, Nepomuceno still had the upper hand at 34.29 percent (2,160 votes), Lazatin at 32.71 percent (2,061 votes) while Cauguiran was able to catch up at 32.03 percent (2,018 votes), while the undecided was surveyed at 1 percent (61 votes), Manabat said.
The local Commission on Election office recently pegged the number of registered voters in Angeles City at 199,007.
Cauguiran’s jump from a measly 8 percent in February to the current 35 percent is indicative of the voters’ appreciation to a new style of leadership at the local government unit especially when the city is faced with huge challenges as a primary city amid the Greater Clark Area’s continued progress,” the Kambilan spokesperson said.
“The first step in changing the political landscape of the city from the dominance of traditional, wealthy families, to a city that is truly responsive to the needs of the ordinary Angeleño, is to catapult to power someone whose strong managerial leadership has been tested for decades,” Manabat added.
