International Journal of Public Opinion Research Advance Access published December 30, 2015

International Journal of Public Opinion Research

The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The World
Association for Public Opinion Research. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1093/ijpor/edv041

How Voters Combine Candidates on the Ballot:

The Case of the Philippine Senatorial Elections

1 2
Clarissa C. David and Erika Fille T. Legara

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1
College of Mass Communication, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines;
2
Institute of High Performance Computing, Agency for Science, Technology and Research,
Singapore

Abstract
In the Philippines, senators are nationally elected officials, and citizens vote for 12
candidates every three years. The country’s electoral features include a weak party
system, a low-information environment for voters, and a history of political dynasty
rule and preponderance of media celebrities in elected political offices. The article first
applies cluster analysis on exit poll data for the 2010 Senatorial Election and then
examines predictors of Senatorial candidate sets. Hypotheses are proposed based on
theories and evidence that name recall has important consequences in voter decision-
making under low information circumstances, and that media celeb-rities and
members of political dynasties benefit from the name recall vote. Findings support
predictions that voters put media celebrities and members of national pol-itical
dynasties together often on a ballot and that the voters who are likely to operate with
little information are more likely to vote for these candidates. These are voters with
low education and low income, who live in rural areas, and who exhibit high
abstention rates.

Interest in studying factors that influence voter selection of candidates remains

strong even with the expansive existing literature. This interest is, in part, fueled
by the fact that across many countries that practice democratic elec-tions, the
contexts and relevant factors in play vary widely. For instance, some countries
have strong party systems organized around ideologies that inform candidate
positions and platforms, while other countries, such as Brazil (Ames, Baker, &
Renno, 2009), Korea (Wong, 2015), and the Philippines (Hicken, 2015) have
weak party systems. For voters in weak party systems, party

All correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Clarissa C. David, College of Mass
Communication, University of the Philippines, Plaridel Hall, Ylanan Rd., Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines
1101. E-mail: Ccdavid2@up.edu.ph
2 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

affiliation of the candidates does not factor heavily in vote choice. Information
availabilities, likewise, can influence the factors voters consider when
selecting candidates.
Philippine electoral politics is characterized by a weak multi-party system
that operates within a context where the electorate is largely poor, with low
income and education. The official poverty rate in 2012 was 20%, with half
operating at a subsistence level. Considering that the poverty threshold used is
around $1.25 per capita per day, a considerably larger proportion lives in poor
conditions. Consequently, a substantial portion of the electorate operates in a
low-information environment, relying solely on television news and

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advertising to gain information about candidates.
Given what is known about low-information election environments and the
history of Philippine election races, this article situates its analyses within the
literature that looks at different decision heuristics poorly informed voters
might rely on (Darcy & Marsh, 1994 ), specifically name recall manifested
through selection of candidates with dynastic relations, incumbent advantage,
and media celebrity status.
This study examines how voters select multiple candidates for national
elections, specifically, how candidates are put together by voters in sets on a
ballot. This is done through analysis of the clustering of candidates by voters
and the voter traits that predict selection of clusters. In addition, hypotheses
are also proposed about the possible sources of clustering, namely polit-ical
ticket and name recall (operationalized as celebrity, incumbent, or dynastic).

Candidate Selection: Selecting and Combining

Voters in the Philippines do not consider political party affiliation a useful

basis for selecting the candidate they will support. A 2007 nationally repre-
sentative survey on attitudes toward political parties in the country showed
that 67% of voters did not think there was a political party that protects their
welfare, 82% do not belong to a party, 95% could not correctly identify the
political party to which the current president belongs, and only 3% think that
1
the party matters more than the candidate when deciding on their vote (Social
Weather Stations Inc., 2007). Because party affiliation is widely believed to
have little relevance in voter decision-making, it is not asked in public opinion
surveys.
Voters use political parties as a basis for vote choice when the party system in
a country is strong (Klein & Baum, 2001). In weak party systems, voters

http://www.kas.de/wf/doc/kas_20518-1522-2-30.pdf?100917093840
1
 COMBINING CANDIDATES 3
resort to candidate-centered factors rather than party-based ones as a basis for
decision-making. It has been argued that split-ticket voting, combining can-
didates from different parties on a ballot, is indicative of citizen’s ‘‘suscepti-
bility to candidate-centered appeals, appeals that persuade at the expense of
programmatic proposals offered by policy-minded political organizations’’
(Ames et al, 2009, p. 9). This is the likely case in the Philippines, where
political parties are organized along personal alliances among business and
political elites rather than ideologies (Pertierra, 1988). We study candidate
selection in the context of the Philippine senatorial election.

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Senatorial Elections

The Philippines has 24 senatorial seats. Each senator has a six-year term and
is allowed up to two consecutive terms and four nonconsecutive terms. Every
three years, alternating between presidential and local elections, 12 senatorial
seats are open. Unlike senators in the United States or members of parliament
in the U.K., which are locally elected offices, senators in the Philippines are
nationally elected. During regular, nonpresidential elections, the same number
of senate seats is open along with a slew of local positions such as district
representatives, mayors, governors, and barangay officials (the smallest polit-
ical unit). These midterm elections do not have implications on the viability of
reelection of presidents, because both the President and the Vice President are
limited to one six-year term. This means that in every electoral race, all voters
select 12 names from a large field of senatorial candidates, and candidates
with the highest number of votes are the winners. In the 2010 election, 61
people ran for the Senate.
This unique arrangement makes the vote choice process significantly dif-
ferent from that of voting for offices where only one name is chosen. It also
makes it different from elections where citizens choose, for instance, one or
two local congressional representatives from a small field of candidates. The
long list of names that can be selected, or space on the ballot, presents a
distinct configuration of decision-making factors.
First, voters have the option to not fill up the ballot. In the same way that
in the Presidential Election a voter can abstain, in this case they can choose to
abstain 12 times. Thus, the range of votes for senator can be between 0 and
12. The average number of candidates people vote for, referred to as senatorial
fill-up rate, has been between seven and eight nationally. Thus, in any given
election, there is a significant amount of space on the ballot. Little is known
empirically about the determinants of fill-up rate. The importance of filling all
12 slots is often debated in the media. On the one hand, why should voters feel
compelled to vote for people they do not strongly support simply because they
have 12 available slots and not enough candidates they want to vote for?
4 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

On the other hand, abstaining is often criticized as wasting an opportunity to

participate fully in the democratic process. Because there is so much space left
on the ballot in any election, the implication is that a vote for one senator is
not a vote against another. For some, it is possible that voters are committed to
the first few names, and vote for some others only because they feel the need
to fill all slots. This is supported by evidence from opinion polls that a fifth of
voters usually have not decided on all 12 senators to vote for (or whether they
will have 12 names at all) until they get to the voting booth (22%, Social
Weather Stations, Inc., 2001). The name recall advantage can theoretically
become larger in this context because there is a smaller cost to voting for a

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candidate whose name is recognizable (with no additional infor-mation) in
terms of the trade-off with losing an opportunity to select a dif-ferent
candidate.
Second, voters’ selection of candidates can be thought of as putting them
in ‘‘sets.’’ That is, how do voters put together a slate of names? In the U.S.
literature, and in much of the Western democratic world, political party is a
strong predictor of candidate selection (Basinger & Lavine, 2005), with the
assumption that party affiliation is based on an organized set of ideological
beliefs and core values about the role of government and the policies that
emanate from it. Liberals will vote for liberals, and conservatives for conser-
vatives. Party affiliation is not a reliable predictor of vote choice in the
Philippines. Candidates freely move from one party to another, and parties

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form coalitions with other parties for election purposes.
In addition to political parties, in every election, parties are allowed by
election law to organize what is called a ticket. A ticket is a set of 12 candi-
dates that is selected by a party, financially supported by the organization, and
campaigned as a set. Members of a ticket do not have to come from the same
party and do not have to belong to the party hosting the ticket. A single
candidate can agree to be on more than one ticket. For example, Senator
Ramon ‘‘Bong’’ Revilla, a popular incumbent, belongs to the Lakas-Kampi
Party, but is named on three tickets. This is one manner of putting candidates
in sets for voters, in hopes of shoring up support for the lesser-known can-
didates by affiliating with incumbents and nationally known people.
This complex mix of rules surrounding party organization and election and
campaign practices means there are potentially multiple decision factors for
selecting individual candidates and then combining candidates. In some ways,
there are fewer restraints to making senatorial vote decisions than presi-dential
vote decisions because of the many slots in the senatorial race. Combined with
a relatively lean information environment and weak party system, the system
creates a set of circumstances that exacerbates pure ‘‘name recall’’ advantage
in vote choice. There is limited empirical knowledge about how candidates
end up clustered together in voter ballots, which would
 COMBINING CANDIDATES 5
be related to the factors that influence how people make vote choices. We
apply clustering analyses of votes to understand how voters put candidates
together on the ballot and then gleaned from this clustering the likelihood that
name recall played a role in candidate set selection.

The 2010 Senatorial Election

In 2010, a Presidential Election was held for 12 open Senate seats along with
President and Vice President. Benigno ‘‘Noynoy’’ Aquino III was running for
President and led the race for most of the campaign season by a large margin.

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He is a member of the Liberal Party and was in the middle of his term as
Senator. His party supported a ticket composed of 12 candidates, 10
belonging to the party, and two independents. Other senatorial tickets from the
most-established political parties included that of the Nacionalista Party and
the Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino Party, which had 12 candidates each, but both
tickets had significantly fewer of their own party members in the ticket. Four
smaller tickets were also organized, each with between five and eight
candidates.
The 12 senators ultimately elected was a mix of people belonging to four
tickets and seven political parties. The top-ranked candidate was Ramon
‘‘Bong’’ Revilla (51%), and the bottom ranked among the elected 12 was
Teofisto Guingona III (23%). Thirty-five of the 61 candidates received <10%
of votes, with the bottom-ranked candidate receiving 0.34%.
Historically, incumbents in the Senate and those who have previously
served in the Senate in a nonconsecutive term dominate senatorial elections.
Candidates with no previous Senate experience that win are typically enter-
tainment or political celebrities with prior experience in the House of
Representatives or in local offices or members of political dynasties. It is
common for entertainers, sports celebrities, and media personalities, such as
news anchors, to win elections. The 2010 Midterm Election was not different
from previous senate races, with incumbents, dynasties, and celebrities popu-
lating most of the top 12.

Heuristic Cues in Candidate Selection

Selecting candidates to vote for when dealing with multiple open electoral
seats creates heavier cognitive burdens on voters. The heavier the cognitive
burden, the higher the likelihood that voters will rely on heuristic cues to
select candidates. Studies that have examined the effect of heuristic cues such
as name recall (Kam & Zechmeister, 2013), ballot design, and name-based
cues indicative of gender or ethnicity (Matson & Fine, 2006) highlight the
role of information in the process. Informed voters perceive less cognitive
burden because they have a base of knowledge to draw from in making vote
6 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

decisions. On the other hand, those who have to make decisions in a low-
information setting rely on other cues to decide whether to vote and whom to
vote for.
Through an investigation of the structural model of voting (Degan &
Merlo, 2011) found that selective abstention and splitting the ticket are related
to several direct and proxy indicators of knowledge about the candidates.
More educated, liberal, and better-informed voters have a higher sense of civic
duty, and this sense is negatively correlated with rates of selective abstention.
There tend to be more selective abstentions in voting for congressional seats
than the Presidency, a distribution attributed largely to lower levels of voter

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informa-tion about congressional candidates, leading to greater uncertainty.
Thus, rates of abstention can be suggestive of low information voting. In the
Philippine Senatorial Election, where voters can select up to 12 candidates,
abstention rates are high. The average number of candidates selected is
somewhere between seven and eight in recent elections.
A structural model of voting that looks at the role of information and a
sense of civic duty, as these relate to voter abstention and split ticket voting,
finds that information effects can swing elections (Degan & Merlo, 2011).
Who are the more-informed voters? Various studies have found that generally
older, highly educated, higher income, and male citizens tend to be more
politically informed than the rest of the electorate (e.g., Degan & Merlo,
2011; Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996). These population subsets are more

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likely to have access to media, have stronger political socialization, and start
off with a broader base of political knowledge even during nonelection years.
Thus, education and wealth status are often argued to serve as proxy measures
for political knowledge.
If heuristic cues can affect electoral outcomes, then low-information voters
would be more reliant on shortcuts to make decisions, and therefore each
possible heuristic cue may be consequential to electoral outcomes (Lenz &
Lawson, 2011; Schaffner & Streb, 2002). Its role is highlighted when the
information environment, in general, is low (Matson & Fine, 2006), as it
tends to be in Philippine elections.

Name Recall Advantage: Dynasties, Celebrities, and Incumbents

There have been numerous studies examining the role of name recall in can-
didate selection. In the absence of any other information, voters are left relying
on recognizing names of candidates when deciding whether to vote and whom
to vote for (Lee, 1960). The preference for familiar names in elections (Byrne
& Pueschel, 1974) has been documented in various studies of the effect of
incumbency, political dynasties, and low-information elections. In extremely
low-information elections, voters make inferences about candidates based only
 COMBINING CANDIDATES 7
on the name (Matson & Fine, 2006; Stambaugh & O’Regan, 2003), and the
influence of name recall is strongest in low-information election contexts
(Kam & Zechmeister, 2013; Schaffner & Streb, 2002).
In the Philippines, name recall has been assumed to give an advantage to
specific types of candidates: those who are parts of political dynasties, those
who have national fame through the entertainment business or sports, and
those who have experience in national-level office. There are countries where
having the right surname presents a large advantage in parliamentary seat
races (Siavelis, 2002). Name recall or familiarity, whether by way of political
families, incumbency, or celebrity, can be an important advantage in elections

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where voters see little risk in selecting a candidate they know almost nothing
about, combined with overall low levels of knowledge about the candidates in
general.
Since the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship ended in 1986, >60% of all
legislators elected in the country have been family members of political clans,
70% of these are second- and third-generation politicians in their families
(Coronel, Chua, Rimban, & Cruz, 2004, p. 47). Having a known political
name, whether for good or bad reasons (e.g., the son, daughter, and wife of
former dictator Marcos hold elected political offices), is considered an
advantage. The ‘‘dynasty advantage’’ (Feinstein, 2010) has been shown to
have benefits as a result more of brand name and familiarity rather than as
evidence of past political experience. Young aspiring politicians are boosted
by inherited fame and influence (Clubok, Wilensky, & Berghorn, 1969), even
when one takes into account their political experience (Feinstein, 2010).
If name recall were the main mechanism for the dynasty advantage, then
nationally known media celebrities in areas outside of politics would enjoy
similar victories in elections. Celebrities aspiring for political office enter
elections with an advantage of basic name recall or familiarity with a broad
spectrum of voters (Zwarun & Torey, 2011). Additionally, they have been
found in other countries to be able to use their identities as ‘‘political
outsiders’’ and market themselves as the better, cleaner, newer alternatives to
entrenched politicians (Marsh, Hart, & Tindall, 2010; Mukherjee, 2004).
Media’s preference for the more famous candidates creates an even more
lopsided playing field, as celebrities get more television airtime and news-
paper column inches during a campaign, fueled by public fascination (West &
Orman, 2003).
Mere name recognition diminishes as a factor when an incumbent is run-
ning, because incumbency itself signifies experience in the elected position as
well as name recognition (Karp, 1995; Krebs, 1998; Panagopolous & Green,
2008). In other words, being an incumbent in itself creates greater exposure
and name recall.
8 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

Determinants of Vote Choice in the Philippines

The most frequently cited reasons for candidate popularity in Senate Elections
are celebrity status, being members of old political dynasties, and having a
national presence through some kind of entertainment connection (e.g., being
married to a celebrity). Candidate winnability is discussed often as a ‘‘person-
ality versus platform’’ issue, highlighting the importance of image and celeb-
rity in political victories. The term personality is often used by both elites and
the mass of voters; in fact, in 2010, half of voters say that they based their
votes on personality rather than platform. To cite a few examples of celebrities

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in office, current incumbent Senators include two former movie actors, a
former television and film comedian, and a former newscaster. On the dynasty
side, there are seven who are either offspring or spouse of a former senator,
including two sets of siblings serving in the same Senate.
The preponderance of dynasties and celebrities winning national elections
in the absence of elected office experience is often attributed to name recall
(Centeno, 2010; David & Atun, 2015). In the 2013 Senatorial Election, for
example, Nancy Binay, daughter of the Vice President, who had no previous
formal experience in public service, placed fifth with 42% of the vote. Grace
Poe, daughter of a famous movie actor with no public service experience,
placed first in the national polls. Analysts say that name recall is a powerful
predictor of likely victory in elections (Torres-Cortes, 2013), largely because
citizens are generally not educated nor adequately informed by media. Thus,

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they make voting decisions based on just the names they recognize (Patino &
Velasco, 2004).
Related to education is social class, a looming presence in any Philippine
election and a consequential factor in candidate selection (Gilbert, 2012). This
is a developing country with a large poor population, a small middle class, and
a highly influential but small political elite that is dominated by the wealthiest
families. The poor, by sheer number, decides who wins elections. Most of the
poor are in rural areas, and thus, we expect that urbanity would be related to
vote choice.
RQ1: How are senatorial candidates clustered together most often by voters?
H1.1: Candidates with name recall advantage, specifically those who are media
celeb-rities, incumbents, and members of dynastic families will cluster.
H1.2: Candidates on the same ticket will cluster.

When clusters are identified and the defining features of each cluster
become clear, we can glean from it some of the criteria that voters may
consider when deciding on how many candidates to vote for and which ones.
We expect, for example, that celebrity candidates and dynastic candi-dates
would be clustered together, while the noncelebrity candidates would cluster
by ticket or party.
 COMBINING CANDIDATES 9
RQ2: What is the profile of voters that select each candidate cluster?
H2.1: Voters with low education are more likely to vote for media celebrities and
dynastic candidates.
H2.2: Voters belonging to lower social classes are more likely to vote for media
celebrities and dynastic candidates.
H2.3: Voters who select celebrities and dynastic candidates will have voted for
fewer candidates than other voters.

If the propensity to select a slate of celebrities and dynastic candidates

were determined by the propensity to have low knowledge about other can-
didates, then we would expect that these voters would tend to vote for fewer

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than 12 candidates.

Method

The 2010 Election was held on May 10, and the exit poll data were gathered
by the Social Weather Stations, Inc. on the day of the Election. In addition to
candidate selection, respondents were asked standard demographic
information and questions about when they made voting decisions and
whether they are optimistic about the future of the country after a new
President is elected. The 2010 election was the first time the country adopted
an automated elec-tion system, which reduced the time it took to release vote
counts from weeks to a matter of a few days.

Sampling
The data had a total sample size of 52,573. Respondents were interviewed as
they were leaving voting centers (VCs). Interviewers were posted at least 50
m away from the VC as required by election law. Distributed across regions
proportional to the number of registered voters, 801 VCs were included in the
sample. In all, 87,885 voters were approached, 52,573 (59.8%) were suc-
cessfully interviewed. Results of the exit poll correctly predicted all 12
winners in the senatorial races using ranks of all 61 candidates; the correlation
between ranking of candidates by the exit poll and by official results is .992.

Measures
Vote choice for Senators was coded (1) for having voted for a candidate and (0)
for not voting for a candidate. The 61 dummy variables for all candidates were
used for clustering analysis to determine how voters put together candidates in a
set. Four clusters were identified, and a variable was created to assign each
respondent to a cluster based on the set of Senators he selected. All senatorial
votes were summed to create a measure for fill-up rate, which is the number of
Senators they voted for (M ¼ 7.24, SD ¼ 4.12). Across the sample, 28%
10 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

voted for 12 senators, 22.1% voted for between 8 and 11 candidates, 26.2%
voted for between 4 and 7 candidates, and 23.6% voted for between 0 and 3.
The final sample is composed of 44.9% males. The whole sample has a mean
age of 40.82 (SD ¼ 15.26), and is 52.6% urban. Social class distribution is 5%
AB, 27.8% C, 42.3% D, and 24.9% E. These are social class categor-izations
used frequently by public opinion polling institutions in the Philippines; it is a
broader measure of income and education meant to reflect social status. AB
classes are the wealthiest, C is upper middle class, class D is considered lower
middle class, and class E is considered poor. In normal household surveys, social
class is determined by observing features of the house, its size, construction

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materials, and neighborhood. Because the exit poll interviews were not done in
households but in VCs, respondents were asked to view a set of pictures depicting
a house that is typical of each social class category to select the one that most
resembles their own. Educational attainment is 11.7% with some elementary
education, 12.9% completed elem-entary, 15% with some high school, 24%
completed high school, 20.9% have some college or vocational education, and
15.6% have at least a college degree.

Analysis
Clustering of candidates

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Candidates were clustered based on how often they co-occur in a voter’s set. A
network of candidates was constructed to quantify the strength of co-
occurrence. For every voter n, a complete graph (network), K n,c, composed of
c chosen (voted) candidates was built. K n,c is a graph where all nodes are
connected to every other node in the network. From the resulting N complete
graphs, a graph G is constructed by adding the individual graphs together.
That is,
N
G ¼K X
n;c

n¼1

where N is the total number of voters surveyed, G is a weighted graph, where

the edge (link) weights indicate the number of times any two candidates were
voted together by a single voter. That is, if the edge weight between candi-
dates c1 and c2 is 25, it means that 25 of the total N voters have both c 1 and
c2 in their lists. The resulting G is shown in Figure 1a, wherein the varying
thickness of the links illustrates the weights between the vertices.
A clustering procedure was then carried out to identify candidates who are
almost always found together in a voter’s list. Because there is no prior know-
ledge on the number of clusters in the collection, Louvain’s community de-tection
method (Blondel, Guillaume, Lambiotte, & Lefebvre, 2008) in network
 COMBINING CANDIDATES 11
Figure 1
Network of candidates. In (a), a weighted network of candidates is shown, where the
nodes represent the candidates, and the links represent the co-occurrence of the
candidates within a voter’s set. Whenever two candidates exist in a voter’s list, a link
is drawn between them. The links are weighted based on the number of voters who
have the candidates together in a set. In (b), the candidates are clustered using
Louvain’s community detection method [1]; the formulation of which is dependent on
the weights of the candidate relationships as depicted in (a).

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science is performed using Gephi (Bastian, Heymann, & Jacomy, 2009).

Louvain’s method is a greedy optimization algorithm that optimizes a graph’s
modularity measure—which evaluates the strength of clustering of vertices
based on the connectivity (weighted edges) of a given network. Louvain’s
algorithm is simple, fast, and computationally efficient. The imple-mentation
of the method on G resulted to four clusters (see Figure 1b). Clusters 3 and 4
are not as robust as clusters 1 and 2 as depicted in Figure 1b because these
candidates did not receive as many votes.
12 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

Table 1
Voter-Candidate Matrix
Voter I.D. C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 ... C50 C59 C60 C61
1 0 0 1 0 1 ... 0 0 1 1
2 1 1 1 1 0 ... 1 1 1 1
3 1 0 0 0 0 ... 0 0 0 0
.
. 0 0 0 1 1 ... 0 1 0 1
.
1 0 1 1 0 ... 0 0 0 0

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N

Candidate Sets of Voters

Voters were assigned to a candidate set based on whom they voted for. In
contrast with the clustering of candidates, here the attributes in focus are the
voting patterns of each of the candidates rather than the relationships of the
voters with each other. Consequently, instead of the community-detection
algorithm, Lloyd’s (1982) k-means algorithm was performed on an N x Y
array that we refer to the Voter-Candidate Matrix, where N is the number of
voters sampled, and Y is a list of features corresponding to each of the 61

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senators quantifying the voting pattern of the sampled population (see Table
1). The algorithm was implemented using the Python package scikit-learn
(Pedregosa et al., 2011). The algorithm was implemented using 4, 5, 8, and
10 clusters, with each parameter setting carried out 10 times to establish
consistency of clustering results.
The four-cluster result was selected based on what can reasonably be
expected, given the electoral rule of voting for up to 12 candidates and based
on the final list of winners. Logistic regression was then conducted predicting
voting for each set using the following variables as predictors: age, education,
class, sex, fill-up rate, and urbanity.

Results

For the clustering of senatorial candidates, the optimal cluster solution in-
cludes four distinct sets of candidates (Table 2). Each of these is named based
on the types of candidates in them. Sets 1 and 2 contain all the winners and
top-ranked candidates beyond 12. Sets 3 and 4 both have a large number of
names, 20 and 22, respectively.
In response to RQ1, senatorial candidates are put together by voters most
often in clusters depicted in Figure 1. All the candidates in Cluster 1 won a
 COMBINING CANDIDATES 13
Table 2
Clustering of Senatorial Candidates
Cluster 1: Cluster 2: Liberal Cluster 3: Cluster 4:
Celebrities, Party ticket Junior Politicians Alternative
Incumbents, and Candidates
Dynasties
a
Defensor, Drilon, Franklin De Venecia, Jose Pimentel,
a
Miriam Gwendolyn
Estrada, Guingona, Maza, Liza Osmena, E
a,b a
Jinggoy Teofisto III
a,c b
Revilla, Bong Roco, Sonia Lim, Danilo Tamayo,

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Cayetano, Pia
a,b Reginald
Hontiveros- Querubin, Ariel Guico, Ramon
Baraquel, Risa
Marcos, Osmena, Serge Remulla, Gilbert David, Rizalito
a,b
Bongbong IIIa,b
a,c
Sotto, Tito Biazon, Ruffy Ocampo, Plaza, Rodolfo
Ramoncito
Enrile, Juan Acosta, Nereus Ocampo, Satur Espinosa,
a
Ponce Nanette
a,c
Lapid, Lito Lacson, Alex Tatad, Kit Maambong,
Recto, Ralph
a Regalado
Ople, Susan Palparan, Jovito
Bautista, Martin Mitra, Ramon III Caunan, Henry
Lao, Yasmin Tamano, Adel Tarrazona,
Hector
Lozada, Sison, Adrian
Apolinario
Inocencio, Kata Imbong, Jo
Virgines, Israel Langit, Rey
c
Papin, Imelda Bautista, JV
Nikabulin, Adz Albani, Shariff
Ibrahim
Paredes, Zosimo Bello, Silvestre
III
Alonto, Zafrulla Lambino, Raul
Princesa, Villanueva,
Reynaldo Hector
Lood, Alma
Valdahuesa,
Manny
Rhinoza-Plazo,
Grace
a
Former Senator/Incumbent.
b
Member of political family dynasty.
c
Media celebrity.
14 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

seat. All belong to at least one of the following types: media celebrity,
member of political dynasty, or had prior experience in the Senate (labeled
henceforth Celebrities and Dynasties). Of the eight candidates, three are
former movie and television actors, three are offspring of former presidents
and senators, and six had prior experience in the Senate. They come from
different political parties and different tickets. This set of top-ranked
candidates is composed of people who can take the most advantage of name
recall, supporting Hypothesis 1.1, which predicted that candidate with such
advantage will cluster together on ballots.
Cluster 2 is a solid Liberal Party ticket cluster; these are also in the leading

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set of candidates by the final election rankings. Of the 11 candidates, 8 have
never held a seat in the Senate, and 4 won in the 2010 race. Many of the
candidates were serving as Congress people, and they are generally a young
set of candidates. The Liberal Party ticket, as mentioned above, is composed
of party members and two outsiders. This set of candidates was aggressively
campaigned alongside candidate for President Aquino, who was popular
throughout the election season and eventually won by a 12% margin. This is
the only ticket-based cluster; thus, Hypothesis 1.2, which pre-dicted that
candidates on the same ticket would cluster, is only partially supported.

The third and fourth clusters are candidates that received small percentages of
votes. Cluster 3 is comprised of ‘‘Junior Politicians’’ and includes candidates that

Cornell University Library on October

had short-term national visibility but little public service experience and junior
Congress Representatives. For example, Remulla was a television reporter and
Congressional representative. Liza Maza is a veteran activist and party-list
representative for a nationally known women’s rights advocacy group, Adele
Tamano was the spokesperson for a major political party during the 2007 mid-
term elections, and Jun Lozada was formerly a Chief Executive Officer of a large
company with years of service in Congress, but turned whistleblower in one of the
most serious corruption scandals of the Macapagal-Arroyo presi-dency. Cluster 4
is composed of candidates who generally have little national presence and
administrative experience. Most of the 20 candidates were either in local offices,
working for political parties, or had been in government service many years ago.
These are candidates that we argue are ‘‘Alternative Politicians’’ or nontraditional
politicians that have small constituencies through the issues or minority groups
they are identified with.
Given the clustering of candidates, the next step is to examine the types of
voters that voted for each set of candidates. Table 3 shows logistic regression
coefficients predicting each cluster, with the variables sex, age, urbanity,
socioeconomic class, senatorial fill-up rate, and educational attainment.
Predictors of the Celebrities and Dynasties cluster as a group is able to explain
only 11% of its variance, while for the Junior Politicians and Alternative
 COMBINING CANDIDATES 15
Table 3
Logistic Regression Predicting Cluster of Voting
Celebrities, Liberal Party Junior Politicians Alternative
Incumbents, and ticket Politicians
Dynasties
Variable B Exp(B) B Exp(B) B Exp(B) B Exp(B)
Constant 0.68 1.97*** 5.97 .00*** 1.39 4.0*** 4.55 .01***
Female 0.08 .93** 0.09 .92** 0.11 1.12*** 0.02 1.02
Age 0.01 .99*** 0.02 1.01*** 0.00 1.00*** 0.01 .99***
Urban 0.12 .88*** 0.03 1.03 0.05 1.10 0.09 1.1***

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a
Class AB 0.16 .85* 0.56 1.74*** 0.11 1.11 0.32 .73***
Class C 0.17 .85*** 0.34 1.4*** 0.00 1.00 0.04 1.04
Class D 0.01 1.01 0.13 1.14** 0.04 0.96 0.15 1.16***
Senatorial 0.13 .87*** 0.28 1.33*** 0.48 .61*** 0.47 1.61***
fill up
Education 0.12 .89*** 0.22 1.25*** 0.08 1.1*** 0.03 .97*
% Correct 73.70 84.70 82.00 77.30
Nagelkerke 0.11 0.23 0.50 0.47
2
R
Note. Cell entries are coefficients (B) and exponentiated coefficients [Exp(B)] from logistic regression
(logit) models.
a
Dummy variables for socioeconomic class, omitted variable is Class E, the poorest class.

Candidates, it is a much higher 50% and 47%. Because Celebrities and

Dynasties candidates received the most votes, winning the election (followed
by the Liberal Party ticket cluster), it is expected that their voters are more
heterogeneous. By contrast, the sets that received the fewest votes had a more
specific profile of voter selecting their names, making the predictor variables
2
perform better, and producing an overall higher Nagelkerke R . Hypotheses
2.1–2.3, that predicted that voters with low education, that belong to lower
social classes, and select fewer candidates to vote for would be more likely to
belong to the Celebrities and Dynasties cluster, are all supported.
Voters that belong to the Celebrities and Dynasties cluster are more likely
to live in rural areas, be poor, have a low senatorial fill-up rate, and lower
educational status. On class, there is no significant difference between classes
E and D, but the more wealthy classes AB and C are less likely to vote for the
celebrities and members of national political dynasties. The negative direction
of relationship with senatorial fill-up rate indicates that those who followed
the Celebrities and Dynasties voting pattern selected significantly fewer
senators to vote for. Coefficients for sex and age are also significant, but the
magnitude of influence is near zero; thus, their effects are not substantial.
16 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

Liberal Party ticket voters picked almost exclusively, candidates on this

ticket. Voters that fall under this category are wealthier, have higher educa-
tional attainment, and vote for more senators. The influence of class and
education are particularly large. Those in the AB classes are 74% more likely
to fall under this voting pattern, while for each level of education in-crease, a
voter is 25% more likely to select a Liberal Party ticket.
Those who followed the Junior Politicians cluster-voting pattern are more
likely female and voted for fewer candidates than those in other clusters. Other
than those two variables, none of the other predictors showed significant influ-
ence. They picked candidates who had brief national visibility or were in local

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offices, and are not well known outside of certain issue-based publics (e.g.,
Liza Maza for labor) or had minor/short-term celebrity status (e.g., Gilbert
Remulla was a newscaster briefly before joining Congress). Given the low fill-
up rate, these voters are also highly selective and not the types to fill-up their
ballots for the sake of completing a slate. Cluster 4 candidates are, we argued,
Alternative Politicians. In the clustering, candidates are not as tightly
networked together as in the other clusters, but there are multiple network
edges with candidates outside of the cluster. Voters who selected many
candidates within this cluster have a high ballot fill-up rate compared with the
other clusters and are more likely to belong to the middle class (D).
The most consistent predictors of belonging to each cluster are class, edu-
cation, and senatorial fill-up rate. Figure 2 illustrates, at the bivariate level, how
each predictor is divided up within the clusters. There are clear linear relation-
ships between some sets and educational attainment. Smaller proportions of voters
belong to the Celebrities and Dynasties cluster as education increases, while larger
proportions belong to the Alternative Politicians cluster as educa-tion increases.
For class, the relationships are similarly evident as shown in Figure 3; class D and
E voters are the largest categories of class, and low percentages of them end up in
the Liberal Party ticket cluster. Fill-up rate is substantively different by set (Figure
4), reinforcing the arguments that Liberal Party ticket cluster is a ticket vote, while
the Alternative Politicians cluster acts possibly as a ballot-filling category.
Celebrities and Dynasties cluster voters only vote for an average of 5.5
candidates, these are the candidates that benefit most from name recognition. Set
2, the Liberal Party candidates, have a higher fill-up rate of 10.4 or an almost-full
ballot. Set 3 has the lowest fill-up rate of 3.2 candidates of 12 slots. This is a
large proportion of total number of voters that leave many slots blank. The last
cluster of ‘‘ballot fillers’’ has the highest fill-up rate of 10.7.

Abstention rates (senatorial fill up) have a significant relationship with

education and class. Figure 5 shows the different probability distributions for
the Senator fill-up rate for each of the education levels and economic classes.
Consistent with the literature on abstention, these results indicate
FigureCluster 2by educational attainment

50% Cluster Vo by
Educaon
45%

40%

35%

30%

25%
Celebri es and Dynas es
20% Liberal party
COMBINING CANDIDATES

Percent of Voters
15% Junior Poli cians
Alterna ve Poli cians
10%

5%

0%

Some ES Completed ES Some HS Completed HS Some College/ College Grad and

Educ on Voca onal Up
a
17

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18 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

Figure 3
Cluster by economic class
Cluster Vo ng by Class
45%
40%

35%
Voters

30%

25% Celebri es and Dynas es

of

15%
Liberal party

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20%
Junior Poli cians
10% Alterna ve Poli cians

5%

0%

Class AB Class C Class D Class E

Social Economic Class

Figure 4
Cluster by Senatorial Fill-up Rate
Cluster by Senatorial Fill-Up Rate
12
10
for

8
ofsenator voted

6
s

4
Mea N

2
n

Celebri es and Dynas es Liberal party Junior Poli cians Alterna ve Poli
cians

Clusters

that rates of abstention are suggestive of low-information voting, as these are

correlated with education and class, which in turn are known to be significant
predictors of political knowledge.
 COMBINING CANDIDATES 19
Figure 5
Probability distributions for senatorial fill-up rate by education (top) and class (bottom)

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Discussion

Philippine Senatorial Election rules are complex and operate within a societal
context of low levels of political knowledge within a democratic setup. The
factors found to predict candidate selection among voters in the Philippines
are consistent with existing empirical research on the role that name recall
plays in low-information environments (Matson & Fine, 2006; Kam &
Zechmeister, 2013) and weak political party systems (Ames et al., 2009;
Hicken, 2015; Wong, 2015). Candidate clustering patterns support the
hypoth-esis that voters who have the profile of citizens that will likely have
low political knowledge will select those with a strong name recall advantage
as a set, namely the media celebrities or members of political dynasties. Low
political knowledge voters tend to have low education and income, consistent
with existing literature on predictors of knowledge (Delli Carpini, & Keeter,
20 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

1996). In this study, these are voters who are from rural areas, who are poor,
have low education and social status, and high abstention rates.
Most of the published literature on determinants of vote choice in the
Philippines relies on qualitative accounts and descriptive public opinion data.
Moreover, there has not been systematic account of how voters select the
names for senatorial slots. Much of what is written about how Filipinos vote is
based on political analyses from observations of historical events. This is the
first study to provide empirical evidence of many of the observa-tions that are
often stated in media analyses of electoral results.
In addition to name recall, partial support was found for the hypothesis

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that electoral senate tickets or slates would dictate candidate clustering. Only
one cluster was found to be composed of candidates from a single ticket, that
of the winning presidential candidate. Those who voted for this ticket tended
to be wealthy, highly educated, and have high fill-up rate because the full slate
supported by the Liberal Party has 12 candidates. It is unknown if results from
past elections would show the same pattern of ticket selection, emerging as a
meaningful cluster. The 2010 Elections were unusual, in that there was strong
support for the presidential candidate Benigno Aquino III, whose sen-atorial
slate exhibited strong clustered voting. Packaging of the slate alongside a
popular presidential candidate is presumably the reason for strong clustering
for these candidates, so it would be instructive to see whether the ‘‘slate’’
strategy is useful in midterm elections. During midterm elections, the party of

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the incumbent President would assemble a ticket and campaign for them as a
set, under the endorsement of the President. In 2007, for example, the then
widely unpopular President Arroyo heavily supported a ticket under United
Nationalist Alliance, a coalition of many political parties. Only three of the 12
candidates were elected.
Results for determinants of set selection supported the three hypotheses
posited, relating to education, social class, and voter fill-up rate. Less educated
and poorer voters were more likely to vote for celebrities and members of
political dynasties, shown empirically here by higher voting for Celebrities,
Dynasties, and Incumbent candidates and conversely, lower likelihood of
voting for Liberal Party candidates. In addition, those who voted mostly the
popular candidates tended to have low fill-up rate, selecting only 5.5 candi-
dates on average. This supports the notion that the make-up of the set being
celebrities, incumbents, and members of political dynasties indicates reliance
on name recall for candidate selection. The assumption is that those with less
education, are poorer, and those who live in rural areas (not hypothesized but
found in the analysis) operate within a low political information environment.
Philippine news media are not highly diverse, and the vast majority of the
population relies solely on television network news for political information.
According to surveys, only around 15% of the population read the newspaper
 COMBINING CANDIDATES 21
more than once a week, and among the poor and those with only up to some
years of high school education, it is around 10%, in rural areas, it is 7%
(Social Weather Survey, 2010 Pre-Election Survey). Close to 70% watch
tele-vision, roughly 50% of the entire television market watch primetime news
broadcasts. The distribution of this is heavily skewed toward the urban popu-
lation, the wealthy, and educated.
These findings are consistent with the literature surrounding the role of
heuristics for vote selection among poorly informed voters. Voters of a profile
consistent with being exposed to limited information about politics (i.e., low
income and education) are more likely to select candidates operating with a

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name recall advantage, just as found by those who have studied elections in
low-information contexts (Kam & Zachmeister, 2013; Matson & Fine, 2006;
Stambaugh & O’Regan, 2003). These sources of name recall advantage
included being part of a family dynasty in politics or having the right surname
that would link a candidate to experience in political office (Siavelis, 2002),
including incumbency (Panagopolous & Green, 2008). Being a celebrity mat-
ters as well, insofar as having a broad or cross-cutting awareness level among
voters (Zwarun & Torey, 2011), and relying on a base of voters that are
mostly poor and have low educational attainment (David & Atun, 2015).
Methodologically, this article contributes to the literature on voting patterns
by using the ‘‘set’’ clustering analyses. How voters cluster candidates into sets is
meaningful and can be further studied in terms of individual determinants that
lead voters to combine candidates. How the clusters are interpreted and what it
means from a practical perspective may be applicable for countries that have
similar election systems. Certainly from a campaign perspective, planners can use
historical clustering information to make selections for their candidates in terms of
which tickets to join, which coalitions to align with, and who to campaign with.
When there is so much space on the senatorial ballot at the national level as it has
been in the past three Philippine election cycles, candi-dates that rank near the
winning 12 in preelection polls can learn important lessons on how to convince
voters to add their name onto blank spaces.
Pushing this work further on two fronts would be instructive where the
literature on voting determinants remains thin. First, more research is needed
to understand whether beyond the simple name recall advantage, entertain-
ment celebrities have other advantages among voters. Are they perceived to be
more approachable? Is there a ‘‘winnability’’ mythic aspect to their run that
further fuels support? Or do voters perceive them to be less corruptible
compared with candidates that appear to be more like traditional politicians?
Second, a further examination of the determinants of abstention would be in
order from both a theoretical and practical perspective. Why do voters opt not
to fill their ballots? The literature on selective and strategic abstention is
expansive; however, these are almost all within electoral conditions, where
22 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

there is only one or two spaces on the ballot. The unique configuration of the
Philippine senate election presents a different set of conditions for which
current knowledge about determinants of abstention may not apply.
The main takeaway of this article is that there is an urgent need to get
political information to voters to achieve two goals: first, to increase the total
number of votes that people cast for Senate, and second to give candidates
without name recall advantage, a fighting chance to make a showing in results.
The first goal may lead to achieving the second. As it stands, the best chance a
noncelebrity and nondynasty politician may have at winning a national-level
office, regardless of experience and competence, is to join a Senatorial ticket

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that is pushed by the same political party of a popular Presidential candidate.
The long-term solution is to bring more information about all candidates to
voters. A typical rural voter in the country relies on posters and endorsements
of local politicians. While network news broadcasts have wide reach, their
limitation is in diversity of coverage of different politicians. Campaign and
election rules may have to be reformed to ensure more equitable visibility of
candidates seeking Senatorial office.

Funding

This research was supported by the Enhanced Creative and Research Work
Grant by Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs of the University
of the Philippines (ECWRG-2014-11). Data were made available by the

Cornell University Library on October

Social Weather Station, Inc. through the help of Mr. Leo Laroza and its
President Dr. Mahar Mangahas.

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Biographical Notes
Clarissa C. David is a Professor at the College of Mass Communication, University of
the Philippines and a Fellow of the Social Weather Station, Inc. Most of her work is in
the areas of news frames, determinants of vote choice, and the role of framing in
policy advocacy.
 COMBINING CANDIDATES 25
Erika Fille T. Legara is a Scientist at the Institute of High Performance Computing,
A*STAR (IHPC) Singapore. Bulk of her work deal with the diverse applications of
statistical mechanics, network theory, and agent-based modeling in understanding
Complex Systems. She is currently doing research in the Science of Cities looking into
various socio-technical and economic systems.

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