Public opinion polling firm Pulse Asia has defended itself from critics after its surveys became the recent topic of allegations from various groups.
The said groups recently accused Pulse Asia of being "bought," for its fieldwork being compromised due to the "infiltration of partisan groups," and for releasing its latest survey results 15 days before election day.
In a statement, Pulse Asia president Ronald Holmes came to the defense of the organization and shot down the accusations.
"Our organization will never submit to any form of material inducement or even intimidation that will make us deviate from or distort accepted social science principles and practice," he said.
"We have also taken all the necessary safeguards to secure the integrity of our fieldwork against any and all forms of infiltration," he added.
On the accusation that it violated the Republic Act 9006 for publishing a survey close to election day, Holmes said the provision on the law has been struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
"It constitutes a prior restraint on the freedom of expression, among others," said Holmes, citing the decision.
According to the Pulse Asia president, such false accusations only "deepen polarization and distrust and contribute to the continuous erosion of an already extremely feeble democratic order."
"Those who make these unfair and unjust criticisms bear the responsibility for their baseless accusations feeding into the spiral of disinformation and misinformation that afflicts our society," he said.
On survey 'flaws'
Meanwhile, Holmes also addressed several "flaws" pointed out by a certain Dr. Romulo Virola online, who claimed that there was an under-representation of various groups in Pulse Asia's surveys.
Virola said that there was an under-representation of the socio-economic classes A, B, and C in the surveys after employing the Unified Socio-Economic Classification (1SEC) method.
Holmes, however, said that the 1SEC method continues to be "subject to further validation," with Pulse Asia using the regular SEC used by most market research firms.
The second criticism from Virola was on the under-representation of the youth and those who have higher educational attainment.
Holmes defended their surveys stressing that they note a margin of error for each socio-demographic group (SDG).
"This margin of error reflects the variance for the SDG given its share of the total sample of the survey and corrects, to a significant extent, what Dr. Virola finds as an under/oversampling of specific SDGs," said the Pulse Asia president.
Lastly, Holmes also pointed out that the correction made by Virola on Pulse Asia's March 2022 survey, where he employed the 1SEC method and adjusted the values for under-represented SDGs, could further inflate support for presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.
"If we follow Dr. Virola's logic, a larger sample from the younger and more educated groups may actually inflate Mr. Marcos' support," Holmes said.
The Pulse Asia president then maintained that it is a "non-partisan, non-profit, non-stock organization academics," with its publicly released survey results a part of its own non-commissioned surveys.
"We have emphasized, time and again, that survey results are time-bound and, except for the exit poll, face serious limitations as a means of predicting actual election results," he stressed.
His remarks came after Pulse Asia's latest pre-election survey showed Marcos Jr. and his running-mate Sara Duterte leading voters' preference for president and vice president.
