THERE is a number in the latest presidential surveys that deserves more attention than the rankings.
It is 44 percent.
OCTA Research’s Q2 head-to-head asked voters to choose between Vice President Sara Duterte and Naga City Mayor Leni Robredo. Duterte received 43 percent; Robredo, 34 percent. Momentum Research asked a substantially different question, offering an eight-candidate presidential field. Duterte received 44.2 percent; Robredo, 23.8 percent; and Raffy Tulfo, 12.2 percent.
Those results are not apples-to-apples. They came from different organizations, samples and questionnaires, and one forced attention onto a two-candidate contest while the other dispersed it across a crowded field. Their similarity does not establish Duterte’s true support at 44 percent. It is analytically interesting for the opposite reason: Her share barely moves even when the choice structure changes dramatically (see table).
Change the field
The contrast suggests that Duterte's present support may be more consolidated around her than the rest of the electorate is around any one alternative. That is an advantage. It is not yet an election result.
Momentum also shows fragmentation, not a transferable anti-Duterte bloc. Robredo's 23.8 percent and Tulfo's 12.2 percent cannot simply be added together. A Tulfo voter does not automatically become a Robredo voter if Tulfo does not run, just as a Bong Go voter cannot automatically be assigned to Duterte. Without second-choice data, we do not know where those voters would go. Convenient arithmetic, but bad political analysis.
A newly released OCTA result adds another wrinkle. In a hypothetical tandem test from the same Q2 Tugon ng Masa fieldwork, Robredo-Tulfo registered 45 percent against 42 percent for Duterte-Imee Marcos. The survey interviewed 1,200 adults from July 4 to 11 and carried a national margin of error of plus or minus three points, making the three-point gap a statistical toss-up.
That does not contradict the solo results. A tandem question asks respondents to judge a packaged presidential-vice presidential pairing, even though Filipinos elect the two offices separately. It demonstrates how much candidate pairing and question design can change the race voters are being asked to imagine.
The 44-percent question
There are two ways to read 44 percent. In a presidential election still well in the future, more than four in 10 voters is a formidable base. But 44 percent also means that a majority is somewhere else.
That distinction matters because presidents are elected by plurality, with no runoff. In a crowded field, 44 percent could be overwhelming. In a two-person contest, it would not be enough. The eventual composition of the 2028 ballot may therefore matter almost as much as Duterte's own popularity.
Look at the map
The national number also hides the geography beneath it. OCTA's March head-to-head put Duterte at 46 percent and Robredo at 35. In Balance Luzon, Robredo led 47 to 25. In the Visayas, Duterte led 53 to 34. And in Mindanao, the result was extraordinary: Duterte, 88 percent; Robredo, 3.
That 85-point margin explains much of Duterte's national advantage. Mindanao is not merely a stronghold; in that survey, it gave her enough room to absorb losses elsewhere and still lead nationally.
Her challengers do not necessarily have to win Mindanao. They have to cut the size of her margin there. Turning an overwhelming defeat into a merely substantial one would change the national arithmetic. The Visayas matters for the same reason: Duterte led there, but not at anything close to Mindanao levels, making it a more plausible battleground.
The newer OCTA head-to-head puts Duterte at 43 percent, three points below March. That movement deserves notice, but not a headline-declaring decline. With OCTA's reported national margin of error at plus or minus three points, two readings are not enough to establish a trend. The next comparable survey will tell us more.
Lead or ceiling?
There is not enough evidence to call 44 percent Duterte's ceiling. A ceiling means she has reached the upper boundary of her possible support, and these surveys do not establish that. For now, the evidence looks more like a consolidated base than an established ceiling.
The election remains far away. The final candidates are unknown. Alliances will change. Economic conditions will change. Political events will intervene. Some people appearing in today's surveys may never file certificates of candidacy. A voter answering a hypothetical question today is not casting a ballot for 2028.
But repeated surveys can show which parts of the electorate move and which resist movement. For Duterte, three numbers belong on the dashboard: her national share, her Mindanao margin and her position in the Visayas. For her challengers, the question is whether voters now scattered among alternatives can eventually gather behind one candidate — and how much of Duterte's regional advantage they can erode.
The easiest headline is that Sara Duterte leads. True enough. Look past the ranking, however, and the more intriguing finding remains: Change the field and much of the vote moves around. So far, hers barely does. Whether that 44 percent becomes her foundation or her ceiling is something the next surveys may begin to tell us.
Bong Habana Ruado is a former public-sector official whose career has spanned government, politics, public policy and the private sector. His current interests include public opinion research, governance data and explanatory journalism, with a particular focus on interpreting political surveys beyond their headline numbers. He holds degrees in political science and law (Juris Doctor) and completed the Strategic Business Economics Program at the University of Asia and the Pacific.
