A survey on voters' preferences over the highly-popular website of a local radio station starts to show a trend on choices for top elective posts in the province. Except for the vice gubernatorial race, “first pick” candidates of the online poll at www.dyrdam.com remain unchanged since t he survey was launched last week. Former provincial administrator and Nacionalista Party (NP) vice gubernatorial candidate Tomas Abapo Jr. surged to the top spot from being at the tail end of the survey a week ago. As of 9 p.m. yesterday, First District Rep. Edgar Chatto, Lakas-Kampi-CMD gubernatorial bet, keeps his lead over actor-director Cesar Montano (Liberal Party) and Vice Gov. Julius Caesar Herrera (NP). Out of 230 survey respondents, Chatto heaped 103 votes (45%), followed by Montano with 72 votes (31%) and Herrera still on the third spot with 55 votes (24%). The vice gubernatorial poll had a major turnaround as last week's leader, Liga ng mga Barangay president Concepcion Lim (Lakas-Kampi), was dislodged from the top swapping places with Abapo who ranked third in votes gathered last week. Abapo is preferred by 86 voters out of 203 (42%) who responded to the vice gubernatorial poll. Former schools division superintendent Elpidio Jala (LP) held on the second spot garnering 65 votes (32%) and Lim getting 52 votes (26%).

Former governor Rene Relampagos (Lakas-Kampi) keeps his lead over two other contenders for the First District Congress seat – city councilors Oscar Glovasa (NPC) and Edgar Kapirig (LP). Relampagos obtained 97 votes out of 189 (51%) online respondents for the First District congressional race. Glovasa is on second place with 68 votes (36%) while Kapirig received 24 votes (13%). In what is widely perceived as a hotly-contested House seat of the Second District, Gov. Erico Aumentado has stretched his lead over Trinidad Mayor Judith Cajes in the online survey, from 12 percentage points last week to 19 percentage points as of presstime last night. Online viewers of the dyRD website are asked to respond to the different surveys, and could only vote once on a particular poll which interests them. The online poll adopts a system which automatically disables the voting options from a computer that has been used to cast votes in each of the surveyed elective positions. The survey excluded the third congressional district since agriculture Sec. Arthur Yap (Lakas-Kampi) is unchallenged.

VELOSO KEEPS LEAD

City Vice Mayor Jose Antonio Veloso (Lakas-Kampi) still leads the city mayoralty contest against incumbent City Mayor Dan Lim (NPC). Out of 208 respondents on this particular survey, Veloso polled 115 votes (55%) against the 93 votes (45%) received by Lim. Former city vice mayor Nuevas Tirol-Montes (NPC) is ahead in the one-on-one vice mayoralty contest with rival Poblacion-2 barangay captain Glorivic de la Serna. Montes is preferred by 95 out of 183 survey respondents or 52%, against the 88 votes received by De la Serna (48%).