It’s the end of the 3rd Quarter of 2009, 2010 is still far far away like the galaxies of Star Wars but the battle for limelight in the coming Elections next year is getting hotter and hotter. Last SWS survey financed by some of the members of the Makati Business Club and former Senator Sergio Osmena III made a landslide vitory in favor of Noynoy Aquino. Though the survey does not represent the sentiment of the nation as a whole, yet it’s result in the vote rich regions of Luzon made raves and rattled all the aspiring Candidates for the highest position on the land. But just recently, Alpha Sigma Fraternity released the result of its very own mock elections held at University of the Philippines Diliman from September 8-15. Inquirer.net ran a full story:

If the elections were held today, Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero would be the new president, at least at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, the result of a mock election conducted recently by a campus fraternity showed.

The Alpha Sigma fraternity held the mock polls over one week, Sept. 8 to 15, giving students a choice from 14 possible candidates for president in the May 2010 elections. Voters were allowed to write down their candidate if his or her name was not on the ballot.

Escudero, a UP alumnus, topped the polls with 690 of the 3,156 votes cast or 21 percent, followed by another UP graduate Sen. Manuel Villar who got 365 votes or 11.6 percent.

In third was Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III who received 278 votes or 8.8 percent. Aquino, an Ateneo de Manila University alumnus, announced his bid for the presidency on Sept. 9 during the course of the mock polls.

Villar ‘bailiwick’

Simoun Salines, Alpha Sigma’s spokesperson for the project, said Escudero won in all the 18 participating colleges except the College of Business Administration where Villar received 64 votes over Escudero’s 56.

Escudero studied at UP from the primary grades through high school, onto his undergraduate and law degrees, while Villar graduated from the College of Business Administration, Salines noted.

“We ensured that each participating student was entitled to only one ballot by having them write their student numbers on it,” Salines said in a press conference Thursday.

The mock election was the first campus activity ahead of next year’s polls. Project head Marc Aguimatang said the fraternity would conduct three more faux polls as Election Day nears.

The 3,156 students who took part came from 18 colleges representing 19 percent of the university’s 16,000 undergraduate population, Salines said.

Not all voted for a candidate, however. Salines said 267 voters or 8.5 percent wrote “abstain” on their ballots.

The other candidates in the mock polls and the number of votes they received were Sen. Jamby Madrigal, 258 votes (8.2 percent); Sen. Mar Roxas, 251 (8%); Sen. Loren Legarda, 237 (7.9%); Bayani Fernando, 226 (7.2%); Mayor Jejomar Binay, 162 (5.1%); Sen. Richard Gordon, 151 (4.8%); Vice President Noli de Castro, 107 (3.4%); Gov. Ed Panlilio, 53 (1.7%); Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro, 51 (1.6%); former President Joseph Estrada, 35 (1.1%); and Bro. Eddie Villanueva, 21 (0.7%).

Students’ sentiments

Students were asked the question on the ballot: If elections were held today, who would you vote for?

Aguimatang said the ballots listed the names of the 14 candidates but students were given the option to name a candidate of their choice who was not on the list.

These candidates were Sen. Panfilo Lacson, 3 (0.09%) and Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, 1 (0.03%).

“We wanted to know how the UP Diliman population felt about the candidates for next year’s elections. Given that our sample is 19 percent, I think our mock elections is conclusive of the students’ sentiments,” Aguimatang said.

Salines, however, clarified that unlike the usual surveys, the mock election offered only raw data and did not have a margin of error found in most surveys.

“It’s a mock election so there’s no study, no framework, only raw data. But it still carries the same accountability and weight of the students’ sentiments,” he said.