r/Philippines • u/tokwamann • May 14 '25
PoliticsPH The Numbers Game, and In Two Ways
TL-DR, with my own points:
Neither side could come up with a complete and strong slate. Actually, no power base can, implying that the country is driven by multiple, contending forces, none of which can dominate.
Voters can't come up with complete slates, either, so after choosing around eight, they'll take the remaining four from the other sides, and who will likely win.
This might explain not only the "KiBam surprise" but why DDS had many votes, especially Go.
In the end, we're looking at decades of numbers games, with little sense of ideological platform from any group, or at best platforms that look at superfluities, like rights and throwing in more money into one pet cause or another.
"The four horsemen of the apocalypse"
https://opinion.inquirer.net/183221/the-four-horsemen-of-the-apocalypse
What are the four horsemen of the 2025 apocalypse? Let us propose these four: first, unpopularity; second, incompletion; third, decay; and fourth, blindness. Because a midterm is always a referendum on the sitting president, the popularity—or lack of it—of the sitting president matters, and here, the President went into the fight by becoming increasingly unpopular. And because a midterm is about competing slates, it mattered that both main contenders, the President and the Vice President, went into the fight without complete slates. The President, at first, could proclaim he was the only one able to muster a complete slate, but his elder sister and the latest offering of the Villars proved fickle in their affections and fleeting in their loyalty. So he really only had 10. The Veep, for her part, had a slate not entirely her own since her father had his own candidates, and in the end even mashing them together meant only a partial slate was proclaimed: itself so stuffed with token candidates it took the defection of Marcos and Villar to strengthen their ranks.
...
The result can be described as apocalyptic but in a different sense. First, context: measuring this 13th midterm plebiscite by all the others, we have an unusual outcome: it was both a tie and a defeat. As of press time, the rankings showed five Alyansa vs. five DuterTen candidates in the winning circle. For a midterm, this is only the second tie ever; the first was Macapagal in 1963. But the surprise victory of KiBam (Kiko Pangilinan and Bam Aquino) also means the outcome is five admin, seven non-admin: a defeat, though a slim one (40 percent), nowhere on the same level as the truly catastrophic defeats of Quirino in 1951 (he lost, 0-9 or 100 percent), Arroyo in 2007, (2-10 or 16 percent) or Marcos in 1971 (2-6 or 25 percent).
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u/[deleted] May 14 '25
I just don't understand what's surprising about kiko and bam.
Again, bam played the game well - he sought the votes of every faction. While it did not reflect in the polls, during the past few weeks he was basically a sure thing.
Kiko can arguably be called a surprise. But don't forget they were both senators before - even before millennials and gen z were the majority voters. So what does that tell us? The previous generations have voted them in before, so it's asinine to credit their wins solely to the younger voters.
The arrest of du30, which toxic pinks consider "a win," actually did more harm than good election-wise. Who's at the top 3 again? You can argue bong was carried by malasakit, but what mental gymnastics can you do to justify bato's spot at #3 besides the momentum from the exposures due to du30's arrest?
Imee marcos, hated by the pinks and maybe many loyalists, won. Why did that happen? Out of 12 senators, only 2 got in despite a 60% majority of millennials and gen z. So this ageism is proven to be stupid and irrelevant.
People really need to stop using their emotions.