A lot is at stake in the 2025 polls.

A total of 18,271 positions are up for grabs. Easily 14,422 or 79% are for Sanggunian members (at the municipality, city, and provincial levels), followed by 254 district representatives, 63 party-list representatives, 12 senators, and 72 lawmakers from the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. The rest are for the all-powerful local executive posts: mayors and vice mayors, governors and vice governors.

More than the availability of posts, though, what’s at stake is the country’s direction in the next 3 years. As the pandemic showed us, there’s a lot that can happen in one year, let alone three, so the quality of the people we elect can set the course for our country — for better or worse.

Lamentably, from October 1 to 8, a seemingly endless march of celebrities, social media influencers, political dynasties, and traditional politicians trooped to the Manila Hotel and other locations to file their certificates of candidacy (or, alternatively, their certificates of nomination and acceptance) for the 2025 polls. Dynasties are disguising themselves as party-lists, TikTokers deluded by their fame are running as well, and too few good people are in the mix.

There’s nothing new about this, of course. Celebrities and trapos have always run for public office. But why is this always the case? Will we always be stuck with a plethora of bad bets and a scarcity of good bets?

The so-called “median voter theorem” in economics and political science might help.

Imagine an election where two candidates need a majority of votes to win. Imagine, too, that voters can be lined up in a straight line based on their preferences. The median voter here is the “middle” voter who can be found halfway through that line. The median voter theorem says that the candidate who panders best to the median voter’s preferences will win.

Put another way, candidates are urged to adjust their positions to match the preferences of this median voter, because doing so helps them capture the majority of votes. Think of what happens in the opposite case: if a candidate strays too far to one side of the political spectrum, they risk losing the majority of voters to a rival who is closer to the median voter’s preferences.

This theory works best in settings with a majority-vote system or a plurality-vote system with just two candidates. But at any rate, it’s a good starting point if you want to predict where candidates in the 2025 polls will tend to align themselves. The Filipino median voter is king.

So who is the Filipino median voter?

The median voter theorem tells us that the Filipino median voter can be inferred from the characteristics or behaviors of those who run in the first place.

Linking this to the recent filings, the pool of candidates for 2025 is dominated by celebrities, social media personalities, or those with famous surnames precisely because the Filipino median voter — in their estimation — values visibility, relatability, and familiarity over other qualifications, such as a strong track record in public service or technical expertise.

Personality over policy

Put another way, the Filipino median voter’s tendency to prioritize personality and familiarity over policy shapes the broader political culture, emboldening celebrities and social media influencers to run in the first place.

This invariably creates a feedback loop, where the voters’ focus on personality encourages certain types of candidates to run. And these candidates further reinforce voters’ focus on personality by using their platforms to campaign in ways that resonate emotionally.

This spells bad news to not-so-famous candidates who need to build name recall from scratch. But what the median voter theorem tells us is that, beyond fame and name recall, candidates wishing to have any chance of winning need to adjust their image and positions on issues based on the Filipino median voter’s own preferences. Candidates resisting this won’t win.

In the US, for example, Vice President Kamala Harris urged Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a white man, to run as her vice president, presumably to cater to the significant proportion of voters who are white and need to be won over from Donald Trump’s Republican base. This is also why Harris, to the surprise of some democrats, has included her owning a gun as part of her talking points.

Back here in the Philippines, I think the idea of the median voter tells us why democratic and liberal candidates (as well as more progressive and leftist groups) haven’t had a winning streak for quite some time.

The landslide wins of Rodrigo Duterte and Bongbong Marcos in 2016 and 2022, respectively, should wake up the opposition to the harsh reality that the median Filipino voter doesn’t care about democratic values or ideals, and doesn’t care about issues of human rights or corruption. The median voter also seems exceedingly vulnerable to online disinformation.

In other words, if only to have a better chance of winning in the coming polls, the true opposition needs to step down from its moral high ground and find ways to appeal to the median voter as described above.

This is easier said and done, and may require compromising and letting go of certain ideals at the risk of being canceled on social media. But away with cancel culture! The harsh reality of the median voter demands such a change in attitudes and stances. Again, candidates on extreme sides of the political spectrum — and choosing to remain there — will have little chance of winning, let alone dominating Philippine politics.

On a lighter note, the median voter theorem also hints at light at the end of the tunnel. If we could find ways to change the Filipino median voter — say, to vote on issues rather than personalities — the pool of candidates might improve. Then we can have more policy debates rather than contests of spectacle and entertainment during elections.

But this is a moonshot right now, and requires a monumental effort that starts with a radical change in the country’s educational system. For starters, we need to improve the education of the Filipino median voter. But how can we do this if the learning poverty rate of the Philippines remains stuck at 90%?

In summary, the median voter theorem offers a way to understand the clownery that was the recent filing of certificates of candidacy. It also suggests a way to refocus the efforts of anyone vying for posts in the 2025 polls.

To the candidates, I say: ignore the Filipino median voter at your own peril. – Rappler.com

JC Punongbayan, PhD is an assistant professor at the UP School of Economics and the author ofFalse Nostalgia: The Marcos “Golden Age” Myths and How to Debunk Them. In 2024, he received The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Award for economics. Follow him on Instagram (@jcpunongbayan) andUsapang Econ Podcast.