26 Feb Rappler Election Poll Manipulation: Roxas Votes Mostly Sourced Out From Foreign Countries
Image Source | www.phvote.rappler.com
Rappler hosts #PHVote Challenge, their monthly series election poll that asks “If elections were held today, who would you choose?”
Digital surveys come from Facebook, Rappler.com and mobile phones via SMS. Partnered with Laylo Research Strategies, they are aiming to delve into the behavior among possible voters for the coming May 9 elections.
Rappler earlier announced who won its December election poll survey. It was Liberal Party standard bearer Mar Roxas. BUT, on the first three days of their January poll survey, they received an irregular surge of votes which made them reevaluate the December results.
And this was what they evaluated.
Below is the hourly poll by candidates as what Rappler recorded.
Image Source | www.rappler.com
The sudden increase of peaks garnered by Roxas was really a big question since the rest of the candidates’ waves moved normally. Really looks suspicious. So Rappler examined where the surge of votes came from and turned out to be from Russia, Korea and China.
Image Source | www.rappler.com
As shown above, it was evident that Roxas received votes not that much until the surge of votes.
Roxas may be the beneficiary of this manipulation but Rappler said that they aren’t able to identify who may have been behind this attempt of gaming the survey given the numbers and sources of the vote surge. But, thinking maybe they could be either Roxas’ supporters or those people who want to discredit him.
“We are extremely concerned by the Rappler article on suspicious online activity on online polling. That there is data suggesting foreign sources is particularly troubling because this is an election for Filipinos, by Filipinos. We are a campaign that has so many committed young people giving up their time and effort, that anything casting doubt on their commitment or efforts is not only a cause of great outrage, but deep alarm,” a statement released from Roxas camp adding that they support the efforts of Rappler to get to the bottom of the said poll manipulation.
After finding out the manipulation, Rappler implemented additional security measures so as to avoid acquiring same results for January and for the coming months before May 9.
Proceeding to the January poll results, it is shown below.
Image Source | www.rappler.com
Last two weeks of December 2015, after the first series of surveys was recorded, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte won mostly in both the SMS and Facebook surveys. Then he won again in the January Facebook poll.
Image Source | www.rappler.com
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