MANILA - Name recall and her association with President Rodrigo Duterte are the possible reasons why Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio topped the list of preferred presidential candidates for the 2022 general elections, a private pollster said Monday.

"I think you can say it's largely a result of association with the President, with name recall, with popularity, with the national prominence of Duterte name," Pulse Asia president Ronald Holmes told ANC.

• Sara Duterte tops Pulse Asia survey for preferred presidential candidates

A pre-election survey conducted by the pollster showed the President's daughter is the early frontrunner for the top post, garnering 26 percent voter preference.

While Duterte is leading the survey conducted from Nov. 23 to Dec. 2, 2020 among 2,400 respondents, Holmes noted the pre-electoral support was "not that high".

"It's basically not exactly a high electoral support for the President's daughter," he said, adding that a large chunk of support comes from Mindanao.

Duterte received 58 percent voter preference in Mindanao, followed by 29 percent in Visayas, 16 percent in Metro Manila and 12 percent in Balance Luzon.

"So, if you have majority support coming from Mindanao and eventually netting 1 out of 4 support on the national level, it means we can expect [that] the forthcoming election will still be largely dependent on spatial or geographical voting," Holmes said.

The pollster stood by the integrity of the survey, saying they have used the same methodology before, which is multistage probability sampling.

"So, the reliability of the survey is at the same level as what we've done over the past more than 20 years," Holmes said.

Names included in the survey were chosen by their research team, which is composed largely of academics, and not a result of any subscription.

"The names there are essentially names that have been introduced by members of the research team. They may not necessarily run as candidates but we've heard from certain reports that these are potential candidates," Holmes said.

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