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Crumbling Vote Gap

A very close poll battle makes the problems of the historic first automated elections in the Philippines take a backdrop for the exciting race for the office of the Vice President. The underdog seems to retain a valid hope that the tide of elections can turn the other way.

Ten hours ago or so ago, vice presidential aspirant Jejomar Binay of Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) made a surprising surge in votes that created a strong 800,000 vote gap, which Liberal Party vice-presidential candidate Manuel Roxas III found difficult to shake off in the election returns (ERs) already at 82.91% of those counted.

Two hours later, the hurdle hardens to 850,000 at an ERs count rate of 84.90 percent. Apparently, at more than three-quarters of returns involved, Roxas will find his chances dim should this vote gap hardens into a one-million vote difference. Liberaly Party stalwarts however remained optimistic as Roxas vote-rich regions (VI and VII) were still to send their precinct reports. Cebu province alone has a total of 2,416,289 registered voters, the largest in the country. At 75-percent average turn up of voters, the province represents at least 1.8 million votes to be counted. With more votes available in these regions, this difference can be erased overtime.

Then the strong vote gap started to crumble on Wednesday (May 12) at 00:00:02 in the morning with ERs at 87.75 percent. Both aspirants continued to gain more votes--Binay reached 13,449,957 votes while Roxas moved up to 8,552,644. While the absolute figures rose, the vote block dropped to 798,000 from 850,000, a loss of 52,000 votes in just a matter of two hours. Will this be the beginning of getting behind for Binay, and a surge for Roxas? We still do not know. By all indications however Binay supporters seemed to have run out of steam already. And that represents a small but believable hope that the Aquino-Roxas tandem will make it through this year's election whole.

When that happens, the rest will be all history.

UPDATE

Erosion of the Binay lead continues. At 88.55% counted ERs as of 07:57:29 on May 12, around 5,000 more differential counts cut down the previous 800,000 lead. Roxas is now 793,180 votes behind Binay.

At 11:06:11 same day, and ER counts at 88.60%, Roxas cut down Binay's lead to 791,672 votes. The 13 regions where Binay dominated seems to make the slash hard but not impossible.

As of 21:09:40 (ER counted at 89.02%), Roxas againt slashes out more votes from Binay's earlier lead, bringing it to 789,279 or a new drop of 2,393. The total loss of the Binay advantage since 00:00:02 today runs at 10,721 votes, and after 21 hours or 1.27% more ERs counted. This means that for each percentage of new ERs counted, around 6,866 counts may be eroded from the lead. If that rate evenly continues, a maximum of only 75,536 votes can possibly be eroded, and Binay still maintains the lead and claims victory.

On 13 May 2010 00:49:13 (ER count of 89.14%), 24 hours and minutes after Roxas broke the 800,000 Binay lead, Roxas cut down the lead to 785,711 votes. Aquino also has broken a 5.0 million lead over Estrada in the presidential race.

At 10:58:10 HR on 14 May 2010 (ER count of 89.98%), Binay lead surges back to 196,921 votes from 785,711 yesterday. Aquino continue to keep his 5.1 million lead over Estrada.

After only about five hours (15:10:31) and 0.11% ERs more counted (90.09%), Binay lead regrouped back to its most resistant level at 800,000 votes, and this time even beyond that at 802,706 votes. With less than 10 percent votes to count and Roxas still unable to dispel the Binay lead, winning the vice-presidential contest gets dimmer for Roxas. Will he still make it? I still do not not for sure, either way.
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