WITH at least 20 days left before the 2022 national polls, presidential frontrunner Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr., was seen as the runaway winner after his voter preference in the leaked March survey of the Social Weather Station (SWS) even went up by eight percent.

Marcos remained well-entrenched in the presidential race after garnering 58 percent voter preference in the March 2022 survey, which significantly increased by eight percent as compared to his 50 percent survey rating last January.

At a very distant second is Leni Robredo with 18 percent voter preference in March or down by one percent when compared to her 19 percent voting preference last January.

It was also worth noting that the numbers of Marcos are continuing to rise as the elections come closer.

In the October 2021 SWS survey, Marcos scored 47 percent, while in December 2021 his numbers rose to 51 percent.

Last January, he obtained 50 percent before notching 58 percent this March.

Meanwhile, Robredo remained consistently below 20 percent in the SWS survey since October 2021.

She scored 18 percent in October 2021, 14 percent in December, and 19 percent in January then went back to 18 percent this March.

Earlier, the Pulse Asia survey declared that Marcos could be the first “majority president” in the country under a multi-party setup, after maintaining his enormous lead against his rival.

Based on the results of Pulse Asia’s pre-election polls released last March, Marcos remained the huge leader in the presidential derby, scoring a dizzying 56% voter preference.

At distant second was Leni Robredo with 24% while Isko Damagoso scored 8%.

Manny Pacquiao, meanwhile, settled for fourth with 6%, while Panfilo Lacson got 2%.

In an earlier interview over SMNI, Ana Tabunda, Research Director of Pulse Asia revealed that if we convert the 56 percent of Marcos to votes, it is equivalent to about 36.5 million of the total 65 million registered voters in the country.

“Well, ngayon lang kami nakakita ng ganyan kalaking lamang sa buong experience namin. Kauna-unahang pagkakataon ito na mayroong nag-majority voter preference na presidential candidate,”

Tabunda said adding that this is the first in history that a presidential candidate has been able to maintain his 50-plus percentage voter preference throughout the duration of the presidential race.

“Marcos was leading by 32 percent margin points and if it is converted into votes, it could be around 19.5 million, which was even higher than the more than 16 million votes Pres. Rodrigo Duterte obtained in the 2016 presidential polls, Tabunda said.

Tabunda also maintained that Marcos’ continuing domination with an almost insurmountable lead is very hard to catch up for Robredo.

“Medyo mahirap po siya (Robredo to catch up), kasi nga po itong huling pagtaas ni Leni ay nine points. Para po makahabol ay kailangang niya ng 16 points tapos kailangang mabawasan si BBM ng 16 points sa darating na araw bago ang eleksyon. Medyo mahirap siya (mangyari),” she explained.

“Maaring magbago, ang tanong e kung makakahabol pa. Hindi naman imposible pero medyo mahirap po kasi 32 points yung gap,” she stressed.