*Dr. Rodolfo John Ortiz Teope, PhD, EdD, DM
People like to believe that elections are arithmetic—that if you add enough promises, subtract a few scandals, multiply your machinery, and divide the opposition, victory will follow. That belief comforts those who lose. It allows them to blame numbers instead of truth. But elections are not solved on calculators. They are felt in the chest. And when the chest does not believe, the hands do not shade your name.
I have seen this too many times. Good men. Educated women. Decorated public servants. People with résumés thick enough to silence a room. And yet, on election night, silence is exactly what greets them. Not because the people hated them—but because the people never felt them.
In 2016, the country witnessed the clearest proof of how narratives win elections. Rodrigo Duterte did not campaign like a textbook. He did not speak in paragraphs meant to impress experts. He spoke in sentences meant to strike nerves. His story was raw, uncomfortable, and even frightening to some—but it was unmistakably clear. The system was broken. Order had collapsed. The elite had failed. And he presented himself as the answer no one was brave enough to say out loud.
Agree or disagree with the outcome, the lesson is undeniable: people did not vote for Polish; they voted for meaning. They voted for a story that sounded like their anger, their exhaustion, and their hunger for certainty. His opponents explained. He embodied. And embodiment always beats explanation.
This is where most campaigns die—quietly, long before ballots are printed. They die in confused messaging. In speeches that sound different depending on who is listening. In values that shift like furniture before every rally. In candidates who want to be everything to everyone and end up being nothing to anyone.
A defective narrative does not merely weaken a campaign—it insults the voter. It tells people, without saying it, that you have not bothered to understand their lives. Voters are not fools. They know when they are being spoken to instead of being spoken with. They can smell rehearsed empathy. They can hear borrowed convictions. And once they sense that, the connection is gone.
What makes losses truly painful is not the defeat itself—it is the disbelief that follows. The stunned faces. The whispered questions. “We had surveys.” “We had endorsements.” “We had funding.” Yes. But you did not have a story that people could carry home, repeat at dinner, defend in arguments, and believe in when no one was watching.
Politics is not just leadership; it is belonging. Every voter is asking a quiet, deeply human question: Where do I fit in your story? Am I seen? Am I protected? Am I respected? Am I finally heard? When a campaign fails to answer that, voters answer by walking away.
I have watched campaigns obsessed with tearing down opponents while forgetting to build themselves. They believed exposure would convert disbelief into loyalty. It never does. People do not rally around the absence of someone else. They rally around presence—around clarity, courage, and conviction.
A strong narrative does not require moral perfection or flawless execution. It requires truthfulness and discipline. It requires accepting who you are and standing by it even when it costs you applause. The electorate can forgive mistakes. What it will not forgive is confusion.
And so, after every painful loss, before blaming machinery, money, timing, or fate, there is a harder question that must be asked—quietly, honestly, without excuses:
What story did we really tell?
Because ballots are only paper. Votes are acts of faith. And faith is never placed in candidates who do not know their own story.
You didn’t lose the vote.
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