FALSE: Marcos Jr. got biggest electoral mandate in Philippine history

At a glance

• Claim: President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. got the biggest electoral mandate in the history of Philippine democracy.
• Rating: FALSE
• The facts: Other former presidents got bigger electoral mandates, which is measured by the percentage of the votes that they got, not the number of votes.
• Why we fact-checked this: Marcos made this claim during his inaugural speech on Thursday, June 30, 2022.

Complete details

During his inaugural speech, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said: “When my call for unity started to resonate with you, it did so because it echoed your yearnings, mirrored your sentiments and expressed your hopes for family, for country, and for a better future. That is why it reverberated and amplified as it did to deliver the biggest electoral mandate in the history of Philippine democracy.”

This is false.

Veteran journalist John Nery pointed this out in a panel during Rappler’s special coverage of the inauguration. “The usual way of comparing election mandates is the percentage of the vote. It’s not the actual number of votes because that’s a function of population. So obviously the bigger your population is, the higher the number of votes the president would usually get,” he said.

According to the Philippine Electoral Almanac, the biggest electoral mandates – based on the percentage of votes garnered – are as follows: 

• Manuel L. Quezon, 1935 elections – 67.99%
• Manuel L. Quezon, 1941 elections – 81.78%
• Ramon Magsaysay, 1953 elections – 68.9%
• Ferdinand Marcos Sr., 1969 elections – 61.47%

Marcos got 58.77% of the vote during the 2022 elections. 

The elections of 1981, where Marcos the father got 88.02% of the votes, was boycotted by opposition groups, labeling it a sham. – Loreben Tuquero/Rappler.com

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