The cascade of votes for Rep. Leni Robredo that allowed her to obliterate the almost one million lead of Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. on May 10 looked strange and the “movement of the votes” appeared to have been manipulated, a statistics and political science analyst said on Tuesday. Antonio Contreras, Political Science professor at De La Salle University who also previously taught quantitative analysis at another university, said it was statistically impossible for Robredo to overtake Marcos in the race with 80 percent of the returns already counted.
Marcos was leading the count on the night of May 9 but his numbers and those for his closest rival Robredo were reversed in the early hours of May 10.
Since then, “the increase and decrease of votes between Robredo and Marcos was constant and the graph showed a straight line. This trend was true also with the other vice presidential bets against that of Robredo,” Contreras said during a roundtable interview with The Manila Times on Tuesday.
“Even if we factor in the bailiwicks… It should have been a zigzag line, a natural pattern in elections,” he added, quoting the data analysis posted on the social media by statistician David Yap of the Ateneo de Manila University.
Reports said that since his posts stirred controversy, Yap has deactivated his social media accounts after being bashed online for being “anti-Robredo.”
Full Article: ‘VP votes may have been manipulated’ | The Manila Times Online.