UPDATED) Candidates in next year's elections who want to gain popularity among voters in the country’s capital might do well to look to 'Ang Probinsyano' star Coco Martin, a survey recently conducted in Metro Manila found.

The Kapamilya actor, whose top-rating show was recently criticized by the Philippine National Police for alleged negative portrayal of police officers, was picked as having the top 'endorsement value' by more than half of voters in Metro Manila polled by political strategy firm PUBLiCUS Asia, Inc for its ‘Pahayag NCR’ poll.

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Martin was also found to have considerable appeal to different socioeconomic sectors in the National Capital Region (NCR), appealing to 57% of ABC members and 48% of DE members. He was also seen to appeal to most of those between the ages of 35-44 (56%), followed by those aged 18-24 and 55 years and above (51%).

'It's Showtime' host Vice Ganda, meanwhile, was also among voters’ top choices (13%) for endorsers, followed by Dingdong Dantes (8%), Sarah Geronimo (7%), Maine Mendoza (5%), and Marian Rivera (5%).

According to PuBLiCUS founder and chief executive officer Malou Tiquia, association with Martin is also likely to help actor-turned-politician Lito Lapid in his senatorial campaign. Lapid, a former senator who plays rebel Romulo 'Leon' Dumagit on 'Ang Probinsyano,' is running under the Nationalist People's Coalition (NPC) party.

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Other actors mentioned as having some degree of ‘endorsement value’ include Alden Richards (3%), Kris Aquino (3%), Daniel Padilla (2%), Pia Wurtzbach (2%), and Kathryn Bernardo (1%).

The 'Pahayag NCR' study is an independent or non-commissioned drill poll or regional context-focused poll in NCR. It was done through PUBLiCUS' research arm, Vox Opinion research, which polled the opinions of 1,862 respondent-registered voters from the NCR on November 16-20, 2018.

To draw the barangays included in the study, researchers used simple random sampling. They then allocated 5 interviews per barangay, and used a kish grid to determine the probable respondent to be interviewed per household. Interviews were done face to face, and were aided with computers.

Disproportionate sampling was used to get at least n=100 for each city. Margin of error was 2.3% at 95% confidence interval, PUBLiCUS said.