Pretending to Support? Duterte's Popularity and Democratic Backsliding in the Philippines

Abstract

The incumbent-led subversion of democracy represents the most prevalent form of democratic backsliding in recent decades. A central puzzle in this mode of backsliding is why these incumbents enjoy popular support despite their actions against democracy. We address this puzzle using the case of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Although some Philippine analysts have speculated that his popularity was inflated due to social desirability bias (SDB) among survey respondents, there has been limited empirical examination. Our pre-registered list experiment surveys conducted in February/March 2021 detected SBD-induced overreporting at about 39 percentage points in face-to-face surveys and 28 percentage points in online surveys. We also found that the poor Mindanaoans, and those who believed their neighbors supported Duterte, were more likely to respond according to SDB. These possibly counter-intuitive results should be interpreted with caution because the survey was conducted during the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, and the findings cannot necessarily be extrapolated to the other period of his presidency. Nevertheless, this study suggests that preference falsification could be an alternative explanation for the puzzle of popular incumbents in democratic backsliding.

Bowed, Bent, & Broken: Duterte's Assaults on Civil Society in the Philippines

“…Emerging findings also suggest that public fear of Duterte's use of violence in police operations compromises the truthfulness of public opinion surveys, to the extent that surveys overestimated support for the war on criminality and drugs by 30-40 percentage points, inflating the perception of public support (Iglesias and Cheng 2022). Other studies also confirm an over-reporting of Duterte's popularity due to social desirability bias and preference falsification (Kasuya and Miwa 2023). That said, fear of Duterte is not necessarily antithetical to his popularity, which is reflected in the 60% vote share his daughter, Sara Duterte, won when she ran for vice president in 2022.…”

Confronting the Philippines' war on drugs: A literature review

“…Supporters of the WOD often claim that the popularity of the WOD, attested to by opinion surveys, means the WOD simply makes sense to Filipinos; those who fail to understand it are therefore 'out of touch' with the Filipino people (Mogato & Baldwin, 2017). Kasuya and Miwa (2023) however found that Duterte, and conversely, the WOD, may not be as popular as the polls depict. Duterte's popularity in polls has been inflated by social desirability bias, a form of preference falsification to appear socially acceptable possibly to protect themselves from being targeted or keep access to resources (Kasuya & Miwa, 2023).…”

“…Kasuya and Miwa (2023) however found that Duterte, and conversely, the WOD, may not be as popular as the polls depict. Duterte's popularity in polls has been inflated by social desirability bias, a form of preference falsification to appear socially acceptable possibly to protect themselves from being targeted or keep access to resources (Kasuya & Miwa, 2023). Still, most scholars puzzled over the popularity of killings in the WOD among Filipinos.…”

Democratic backsliding in the Philippines: Are voters becoming illiberal?

“…Third, Kasuya et al (2022) reported that many voters pretended to support Duterte. In the list experiment conducted in March 2021, they found that about 39% points out of 89% support for Duterte's performance was inflated by the presence of respondents who pretended to support him.…”