The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) said on Tuesday that it noted an ‘emergent youth vote’ in the 2025 midterm elections, with 35 percent of voters coming from the youth sector.

PPCRV spokesperson Ana Singson said at a forum that they think that there was an emergent youth vote in the recent election, and that their organization was not surprised by the winners of the senatorial elections who were not in the top 12 of pre-election surveys.

“We’re happy because there seems to be a youth vote in this election. We think there is an emergent youth vote in this election. Some of us weren’t surprised by the names that surprised others, those that were not in the top 12 before,” Singson said.

Singson explained that the PPCRV was not surprised by such results due to their wide-scale voter’s education program, Tibok Pinoy, which promoted values formation in parochial and private schools.

“When we went to the schools, we saw their mock polls and we were surprised at that time because those voted [by the students] were very different from those in the surveys. The profile of who they voted for was different,” Singson explained.

Singson said the youth realized that they are a big force, and that such realization was noticed in the midterm elections.

“If you look at the youth from 18 to 30 years old, they were 35 percent of the vote, that’s more than one third. I think the youth made [their influence] felt,” Singson said.

“Is this a nascent awakening youth awakening? Hopefully, because it’s nice to see [their] involvement and the 74 percent voter turnout in the last midterm elections is now 82 percent,” she added.

The PPCRV will continue to conduct the random manual audit (RMA) and the audit of transmitted election data until June 12, with 40 percent of physical election returns retrieved nationwide currently being audited in the poll watchdog group’s headquarters in Sampaloc, Manila. Yzabela Velez-White/DMS