8 in 10 satisfied with democracy
MANILA — Most Filipinos are satisfied with the way democracy works in the country, according to the latest Social Weather Stations’ poll.
The survey, conducted from September 15 to 23, found 84 percent of adult Filipinos saying they are satisfied. This is six points above the 78 percent logged in March 2018.
Satisfaction with democracy was highest among “committed democrats” at 88 percent, followed by “conditional authoritarians” at 80 percent and “indifferent” at 74 percent.
The September 2018 poll also found that majority of Filipinos prefer democracy over other forms of government.
Of the respondents, 59 percent said that “democracy is always preferable to any other kind of government.” The proportion of what SWS calls “committed democrats” barely moved from the 60 percent recorded in June.
Twenty percent are classified as “conditional authoritarians,” or those who answered that “under some circumstances, an authoritarian government can be preferable to a democratic one.” This hardly moved from June’s 19 percent. The survey findings come amid seeming nostalgia for martial law and a faint but persistent call for President Rodrigo Duterte to declare a "revolutionary government."
Those who are “indifferent” or responded “for people like me, it does not matter whether we have a democratic or a nondemocratic regime” barely changed to 19 percent in September from 21 percent in March.
The survey was conducted using face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults.
It has sampling error margins of ±3 percent for national percentages, ±4 percent for Balance Luzon, and ±6 percent each for Metro Manila, Visayas, and Mindanao.