Note: This is a column article of BenCyrus G. Ellorin at SOUTHERN PERSPECTIVE

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY/ May 19, 2026 –The March 2026 OCTA survey indicates that Sara Duterte, paired with Imee Marcos, is beatable by the tandem of former vice president Leni Robredo and Sen. Raffy Tulfo, with a score of 44%-40%.

This is viewed as a gain against the vice president, who is being projected as the candidate to beat.

But is the anti-Duterte camp really losing ground?

We take the view that the vice president is gaining ground.

The traditional bulwark of the Dutertes is Mindanao. In the 2016 polls, President Rodrigo Duterte won 60% of the votes in Mindanao, taking 85% of his home region, Davao. Surveys have also indicated that Sara Duterte’s approval rating in Mindanao reached 80%.

The recent OCTA survey, however, indicated the escalation of Duterteification in Mindanao and elsewhere. Many analysts have not given the data in the recent survey prominence, often treating Mindanao as a given for the Dutertes. The survey says 85% of Mindanaoan voters would prefer a Sara presidency. A thin 5% would prefer Robredo. That means that, hypothetically, Sara’s numbers have increased so much across the regions in Mindanao compared to her father’s votes in 2016.

In 2016, the elder Duterte garnered 64% of the votes from SOCSKSARGEN; 60% in ARMM; 52% in Caraga; 51% in Northern Mindanao, and 36% in Zamboanga Peninsula.

The Dutertes have played to the hilt the long-tired narrative that Mindanao is not a priority for the Manila government. This is debatable, though, with many saying the island was no better during Rodrigo Duterte’s six-year presidency.

It should be noted, however, that Dutertefication is never about performance, but messaging based on alternative facts driven by the post-truth ideology. And there is no clear pushback against this narrative based on hard facts.

While the PBBM administration coalition has the numbers among Mindanao legislators, this did not translate into votes in the 2025 polls. Even Manny Pacquiao, who ran under the president’s party, the Partido Federal ng Pilipinas, lost in his bid to regain his senate seat in 2025.

What is more alarming is the creeping Dutertefication in the Visayas. The political strategists of the Dutertes seem effective at consolidating their base in Mindanao and applying a proximodistal strategy that expands from Mindanao to the nearby Visayas islands.

Central Visayas, with vote-rich Cebu, fell to the Dutertes in 2016, but they do not have the balance of Visayas, which is Western Visayas and Eastern Visayas. Panay and Negros islands are known bulwarks of the Liberals, while Eastern Visayas – Samar and Leyte islands could swing either way, with Samar generally led by Liberals, and Leyte, the home island of Imelda Romualdez-Marcos, naturally sliding to whom their political clan supports.
The recent OCTA survey, however, paints another picture – the Duterteification of Eastern Visayas, Sara Duterte gaining the upper hand.

In 2022, Leni Robredo won in Eastern Samar with 45.31% of the votes against Bongbong Marcos’s 39.29%; in Northern Samar, Robredo won with 47.05% of the votes vs PBBM, who got 37.63%. It was only in Samar (western) that PBBM got 56.9% vs Robredo’s 26.39%. Samar was a pink island.

In Leyte Island, the results were as expected, with PBBM getting 76.99% vs Robredo’s 11.87%; in Southern Leyte, Marcos got 66.73% vs Robredo’s 14.6%. In Biliran province, Marcos got 64.44% of the vote, while Robredo got 18.42%.

It is important to consider these figures to understand shifts in the political preferences of Eastern Visayas. With the region expressing preference to Sara Duterte in 2028, it means that the supporters of Team Unity remained loyal to Sara Duterte, while the pinklawans in Samar have shrunk.

It is still a whole two years before the 2028 elections, and the figures have shown that Duterte is netting the Eastern Visayas to add to its Mindanao and Central Visayas dominance. And if they continue to creep northward, NCR and the balance of Luzon may remain against the Dutertes, but their figures could shrink. That is the game plan of the Duterte political strategists.

There are even reports now that the operations center of the Sara presidency will move to Cebu. On the other hand, the Senate coup by DDS senators is believed to be part of a larger plot to use the Senate as their political operations center to fight the Marcos administration.

While, for now, the anti-Duterte forces may find comfort in the rise of their numbers in Luzon, especially in Bicolandia and Western Visayas, these are not set in stone. Political noise from a Duterte-dominated Senate, its fake-news machinery, and grassroots political operations may chip away at some of those figures.

That is why it has become imperative for the anti-Duterte forces to roll out immediately a strategic pushback in Mindanao to defend the remaining 5%, and to at least capture the undecided 10%; to thin out the green ink in Central Visayas, so to speak; and stop the ongoing Dutertefication of Eastern Visayas.

Time is running out, and the window of opportunity is closing fast.

The author is the president of Pinoy Aksyon Inc., a governance and environment watchdog and think-tank. Comments can be sent to pinoy.aksyon@gmail.com.