Will Central Luzon go Team Marcos, Team Duterte, or opposition in Senate polls?

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PAMPANGA, Philippines – Central Luzon, the second most vote rich region in the Philippines, voted Marcos-Duterte in the 2022 elections, but the bitter split of Uniteam has opened some doors for opposition candidates to try and get their piece of the pie that’s worth 7.699 million votes overall.

Take for example Pampanga, with 1.46 million votes up for grabs. The ruling Pineda clan is close to former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo who in turn is close to Vice President Sara Duterte, but their formal endorsement went to Marcos’ Alyansa slate. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Arroyo weren’t present in the Alyansa sortie there end of April. If in Metro Manila, Sara Duterte is campaigning for the opponents of lawmakers who signed her impeachment, there is no obvious proxy war in the Pineda turf.

Perhaps the Pinedas are too powerful to be dragged to a proxy war, observers say. So powerful that opposition candidates Francis Pangilinan and Bam Aquino went to the capitol in March, giving them some screen time to the Pineda base. In 2022, Pangilinan placed only third in the province in the vice presidential elections despite having Kapampangan roots.

The challengers to the Pinedas in Pampanga are actually LP (Liberal Party) men — Danilo Baylon for governor, and Ed Panlilio for vice governor. Panlilio still ran under LP, but Baylon has chosen to run as independent. The Baylon-Panlilio tandem has hosted LP allies Heidi Mendoza, and Leila De Lima of ML partylist. “Ang kailangan kasi nating suportahan ‘yung makikita nating may nagawa, hindi lang sa pagiging popular (We need to support those who we’ve seen have made changes, and not just those who are popular),” said Baylon in a press conference on Saturday, May 10.

There’s also no obvious Marcos-Duterte proxy war when it comes to the third district, a seat that’s about to be left by outgoing senior deputy speaker Aurelio “Dong” Gonzales who is a key ally of House Speaker Martin Romualdez, Sara Duterte’s archenemy. Although his son is up against a Pineda slate in San Fernando, Gonzales did not go into a word war with the Pinedas, and told media he and the patriarch Bong Pineda are not enemies.

Because perhaps a more major concern is making sure that his daughter Mica inherits the third district congressional seat over their rival Tumang family of Mexico. Mica is being challenged by Hazel Tumang, daughter of dismissed mayor Teddy Tumang, who was the subject of Gonzales’ quad comm sub-investigation into the smuggled shabu in Mexico.

The Pampanga capitol has been held by the Pinedas for 15 years, and according to Panlilio, fake news spread against him “is a very strong indication na nayayanig sila (they are shaken).” These are signs that the provincial contest is too heated that national politics may have been sidelined here.

Central Luzon is made up of seven provinces: Bulacan, Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Tarlac, Bataan, Zambales, Aurora, arranged according to voting population from highest to lowest.

Vote-rich provinces

Bulacan is a favorite campaign stop for any national candidate, as it is the second most vote-rich province in the Philippines with 2.173 million voters. Alyansa went to Bulacan twice, and Pangilinan held a motorcade there.

Bulacan’s reelectionist governor Daniel Fernando has endorsed Alyansa‘s Francis Tolentino and Manny Pacquiao. In 2022, Fernando endorsed former vice president Leni Robredo over Marcos, but that endorsement did not translate because the Marcos-Duterte Uniteam tandem still won the province.

In Nueva Ecija, reelectionist governor Aurelio Umali did not make a categorical endorsement of Uniteam in 2022. For the 2025 elections, Umali endorsed Aquino and Alyansa’s Abby Binay. Binay has also scored the endorsement of Bataan Governor Jose Enrique Garcia III.

In Zambales, Aquino, Tolentino and Alyansa’s Camille Villar have gotten support from the incumbent governor Hermogenes Ebdane Jr.

Benhur Abalos, who’s been having a hard time entering the surveys’ Magic 12, has been going around Central Luzon too, trying to get support from local executives in a bid to pull off a come-from-behind victory.

The region is really crucial not just in terms of number but behavior, as it’s been known to be a swing vote. Duterte-allied survey topnotchers Bong Go and Ronald Dela Rosa, for example, are very strong in Visayas and Mindanao. According to the Pulse Asia survey firm in March, “only a fifth of voters (20%) have a complete senatorial slate in Luzon” while 54% of Visayas and 60% of Mindanao have pretty much made up their minds that time. By the last survey of Pulse Asia last week, those with a complete lineup in Luzon remained at 20%, or the lowest.

Where would Tarlac go?

An interesting case study is Tarlac, a province of 936,000 voters, which has always voted for the ruling party. It voted LP senators in 2016, voted Duterte allies in 2019, and voted mostly Uniteam in 2022. If there’s a split in the ruling party, where would they go?

Officially, the provincial challengers Team Angeles, or the group of outgoing Tarlac City mayor Cristy Angeles, are allied with Marcos because they have joined Partido Federal.

That’s not to say though that the ruling Yaps of the Nationalist Peoples’ Coalition (NPC) are not supporting Marcos’ Alyansa because outgoing governor Susan Yap has hosted Alyansa’s Francis Tolentino and Benhur Abalos among others. But she has also supported Team Duterte’s Rodante Marcoleta.

The Marcoleta support may be linked to local candidates wanting to get the endorsement of bloc-voting Iglesia Ni Cristo. Marcoleta himself is in the 14-19 spot just below the Magic 12 in the last Pulse Asia survey.

Both Angeles and Yap endorsed Uniteam in 2022. But the “bring him home” parades in Tarlac for former president Rodrigo Duterte, who’s detained in The Hague, may be some indication that in the split, there is some headway to Duterte there rather than Marcos.

Enter Pangilinan and Aquino again, who have gotten support from the Yaps’ NPC. Of course this is not devoid of family dynamics, as the Aquino branch of the Cojuangco clan is with the Yaps, and the Teodoro branch has decided to support Angeles.

Marcos and Duterte won the votes in all of seven provinces in Central Luzon in 2022. The 2025 midterm elections will give us a better idea of where that Uniteam base is split, and should provide clearer picture to the opposition where they can go if they want to have a real chance in 2028.

– Rappler.com