Belen Leads Poll vs. Brian

                        DAGUPAN CITY’S MAYORSHIP RACE

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

DAGUPAN CITY – The reelective mayor here leads by 3,000 votes her rival for the May 13, 2019 mayorship election, a pollster cited.

Mr. Art Valenzuela, manager of the reputable Vox Populi Polls, explained in a radio interview that this city's  two – term mayor Belen T. Fernandez bagged 2, 900 votes against rival’s Vice Mayor Marc Brian C. Lim in a recent commissioned survey.
Valenzuela however did not mention who commissioned the poll and how the survey was done before the start of the local campaign period in March 29 this year.

MAYORAL RIVAL - Two-term Dagupan City Mayor Belen T. Fernandez and Vice Mayor Marc Brian C. Lim. The duo have been a perennial rival in business and politics. These regional tycoons have mall businesses in the Northern and Central Luzon's areas. 

          “Lamang si Mayor Belen, 3,000. Kung sino ang makakuha ng I.N.C votes that is going to be it. That’s the game changer,” he told DWIZ 89.3  Radio Dagupan.

Valenzuela cited that the figure was almost the same when Lim’ father former mayor Benjie S. Lim tangled for the 2013 mayoral election with the then vice mayor Fernandez.

In that poll, Fernandez beat the older Lim with 3,279 votes but his son Brian won handily the vice mayoralty contest against then councilor Michael Fernandez.

Belen Fernandez chalked up 41,044 while reelective Mayor Benjie S. Lim contented with 37,765.

As based on the November 2018 data given to this writer by the Commission on Election, the city has 119, 164 registered voters.

Customarily, an average of 75 percent of the voters in the country go to the polling precincts to cast their votes.

With that scenario, this richest city in Region – 1 and highest numbers voting local government unit in the province of Pangasinan will be seeing 89, 373 voters casting their votes between Fernandez and Lim.

A political kibitzer who asked for anonymity said that the 7000 voting members of the block voting sect’s Iglesia Ni Cristo here, those who have the monies to buy votes, and those who have the best media and campaign strategies will win the next month’s election.

“Usually the INC votes on the winning candidate as they have their own poll, too. But based on the electoral history in Dagupan City, many voters here are vulnerable to change their candidate because the supporters of the bet give the highest monetary amount to them,” he cited.

Valenzuela explained that dominating the four vote rich villages here like Barangays Bonuan Gueset, Bonuan Binloc, Bonuan Boquig, and Pantal could be the coup de grâce to victory.

         He and his polling outfit had predicted several weeks before the governorship elections in years 2013 and 2016 the heavy loses of gubernatorial candidates Alaminos City then Mayor Hernani Braganza and former Fifth District Congressman Mark Cojuangco when they challenged then governor Amado T. Espino, Jr and his son and namesake the present governor, respectively.
            Early March this year he furnished this newspaper a poll result between governorship rivals reelective governor Amado Espino, III and Alaminos City Mayor Art Celeste. 
Another round of survey result between the duo will be expected last week of this month, he told this writer. 

In the provincial survey commissioned by businessmen led by Catjoe Tayag, Valenzuela said that he used random - sampling with 1,500 respondents.

“The principal method we used in the conduct of this survey was Randomized Sampling with a total universe or sampling frame of 1,500 respondents of voting age as distributed on weighted averages in all of the 3 cities and 44 municipalities of the province. The poll was conducted February 14-24 on a Confidence Level of 98 percent on the overall design with an error margin of 2.8 percent on the overall landscape/level and 3-5 percentage points on the local application at the city/municipal level”.

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