The Social Weather Survey December 12-16, found 93 percent of adult Filipinos entering the New Year with hope rather than with fear.

The difference from the 91 percent recorded in 2020 is not statistically significant, but both readings are below the pre-Covid-19 96 percent in 2019.

On the other hand, seven percent will enter the New Year with fear, unchanged from 2020.

Hope for the New Year started at 87 percent when SWS first asked the question at the end of 2000. It was in the 90s at the end of 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2010 to 2021. It was in the 80s at the end of 2000, 2001, 2004, 2005, and 2009.

The December 2021 survey found that 65 percent of adult Filipinos expected Christmas to be happy, 8 percent expected it to be sad, and 22 percent expected it to be neither happy nor sad.

The percentage of those who are entering the New Year with hope rather than fear is higher among those who expected a happy Christmas (98 percent) than those who expected neither a happy nor sad Christmas (90 percent) and those who expected a sad Christmas (88 percent).

Hope for the coming New Year has always been higher among those who expected a happy Christmas than those who expected a sad Christmas.

Compared to the end of 2020, hope for the coming New Year rose in Metro Manila (from 90 percent to 95 percent), Balance Luzon (from 92 percent to 93 percent), and the Visayas (from 88 percent to 90 percent).

It stayed at 93 percent in Mindanao.

Compared to the end of 2020, New Year hope rose among elementary graduates (from 89 percent to 90 percent), among junior high school graduates (from 92% to 94%), and among college graduates (from 94 percent to 98 percent).

It declined slightly from 91 percent to 89 percent among non-elementary graduates.

The Fourth Quarter 2021 Social Weather Survey was conducted from December 12-16, 2021, using face-to-face interviews of 1,440 adults (18 years old and above) nationwide: 360 each in Balance Luzon, Metro Manila, the Visayas, and Mindanao.

The sampling error margins are ±2.6 percent for national percentages, and ±5.2 percent for Balance Luzon, Metro Manila, the Visayas, and Mindanao.

The area estimates were weighted by the Philippine Statistics Authority medium-population projections for 2021 to obtain the national estimates.

This question was patterned after the polls conducted annually since 1991 by the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach (www.ifd-allensbach.de), a pioneer opinion research institute in Europe. SWS