SAN FERNANDO CITY, La Union (2 November) -- Did Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo really win in the 2004 elections?

"Truth is Arroyo won," according to University of the Philippines economist Solita Collas Monsod in her column, Get Real, Philippine Daily Inquirer, October 29, 2005.

Monsod cited three reasons to support her claim that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo won the May 2004 presidential race.

One. In several pre-election surveys of the Social Weather Stations and Pulse Asia, voter preferences favored Ms. Arroyo.

Philippine Voter Preferences, 2004
SWS	Jan 16-22	Jan 28-Feb 8	Feb 17-25	Mar 11-19	Mar 21-29	Apr 10-17	May 1-4
Arroyo	26.5%	28.7%	31.8%	32.9%	31.4%	35.3%	37%
Poe	36.3%	37.5%	30.5%	34.9%	32.0%	30.8%	30%

Two. Exit polls conducted by media organizations on election day showed Arroyo ahead of her closest rival.

Philippine Election Exit Polls, 2004
	ABS-CBN/SWS	GMA 7/AMA	Radio Veritas	DZRH
respondents	(4,627)	(24,805)	(4,800)	(20,000)
Arroyo	41%	39%	38.1%	36.8%
Poe	32%	29%	26.7%	31.7%

Third. Final official congressional canvass showed Ms. Arroyo garnering 40 percent of the votes cast, while Poe got 36.5 percent (a difference of 1.1 million votes).

Philippine Presidential Election Results, 2004 Final Official Congressional Canvass
Candidate	Party	Votes won	% of Total
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo	Lakas-CMD	12,905,808	40.0%
Fernando Poe, Jr.	KNP	11,782,232	36.5%
Panfilo Lacson	LDP	3,510,080	10.9%
Raul Roco	AD	2,082,762	6.4%
Eduardo Villanueva	BPM	1,988,218	6.2%
Total Valid Votes Cast		32,269,200	100.0%

Sec. Ricardo Saludo in his article, Who Won the Elections?, wrote: "a final set of numbers buttressing the President's triumph and the consistency of results were the victories of most of her fellow candidates for nearly all positions, K-4 captured close to 90% of the congressional, gubernatorial and mayoral positions."

These overwhelming successes in districts, provinces, cities and municipalities nationwide could not but have helped the coalition's presidential standard bearer to also garner big votes among most of those constituencies, according to Saludo.

"Then there was the endorsement (albeit last minute -- but this shows that they were jumping on the bandwagon) that Ms. Arroyo received from the Iglesia ni Cristo and El Shaddai. And finally, it was generally acknowledged that Poe was shooting himself in the foot during the campaign, and that the opposition was split four ways. In other words, they did it to themselves," Monsod wrote.