Candidates aligned with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. are set to sweep the Senate elections in May, according to a new public opinion survey.
The survey, published yesterday by the local pollster Social Weather Stations (SWS), shows that nine of the 12 senatorial candidates endorsed by Marcos, Jr. are among the 13 candidates with the most support ahead of the May 12 election. Two of the 13 are allies of the Philippine leader’s predecessor and bitter rival, Rodrigo Duterte, and the remaining two are independents.
In line with the nationwide Senate election process, SWS asked respondents to select their 12 most preferred candidates for the Philippine upper house. (While there are only 12 Senate seats up for grabs, the 11th, 12th, and 13th-ranked candidates were tied in the support they received from survey respondents.)
The Senate seats are among the most important posts up for grabs in the midterm elections on May 12, when around 70 million Filipinos will vote to fill 18,280 positions across the country. In addition to the 12 Senate positions, this includes 317 seats in Congress, 82 governorships and vice-governorships, and thousands more executive and legislative positions at the regional and municipal level.
The Senate election, which is being contested by 64 candidates, has shaped for months as a proxy battle between the Marcos and Duterte camps, whose relationship has deteriorated dramatically over the past 18 months.
While the two clans together formed the “Uniteam” ticket that scored a landslide victory at the 2022 presidential election, catapulting Marcos into the presidential palace and Duterte’s daughter Sara into the vice-presidency, they have since fallen out over a toxic mix of personal and political differences. In mid-2024, Vice President Duterte resigned from the Marcos cabinet and has since been investigated by the House of Representatives for her misuse of millions of dollars in public funds. In February, she was impeached by the House for this and a host of other alleged transgressions, including corruption and a supposed threat to assassinate the president.
Meanwhile, Duterte Sr. was arrested in Manila earlier this month and sent to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, where he faces charges of crimes against humanity connected to his extrajudicial “war on drugs.”
The SWS survey, which was conducted in the same week that Duterte was arrested and extradited, indicates that the attempts of the family and its supporters to whip up opposition to the Marcos administration have failed to translate into robust midterm election support – at least so far.
“Right now, it’s safe to say that the Marcos administration and the coalition they have built, which includes five major political parties, can win big in the May 2025 election,” Victor Andres C. Manhit, the president of the consultancy Stratbase, which commissioned the SWS survey, said in a statement. “Beyond the incumbency advantage, the President has fostered unity among various political forces.”
All of this is bad news for Sara Duterte, whose chances of surviving her Senate impeachment trial in June could hinge on the results of the election. If successfully impeached – this requires a two-thirds vote – she would lose her position and be banned from standing for political office for life. This would dash her reported plans to run for the presidency in 2028.
To be sure, two key Duterte allies are on track to be re-elected to the Senate, according to the SWS survey results. With the support of 42 percent of respondents, Bong Go, a former presidential aide of Duterte who has been active in campaigning for his release from the ICC, tied in first place with another candidate. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, a former national police chief who spearheaded the first phase of Duterte’s “war on drugs” and could soon be the subject of his own ICC arrest warrant, received 30 percent support.
However, this polling seems to suggest that the political war between the Marcoses and Dutertes is well on the way to ending in a decisive victory for the president.
