The 2024 College of Social Sciences & Philosophy Student Council elections concluded several months ago to a split council, with SALiGAN sa CSSP taking 8 seats and BUKLOD CSSP earning 7. Meanwhile, independent candidates took two seats while two more remain vacant.

In this year's post-elections result analysis, we explore the departmental and level data to better understand how students in the College voted and what each party can expect, following the trends in the past several years.

Turnout Trends and Tangents

This Year's Turnout

Total turnout for the 2024 elections was 1,107 out of 2,133 eligible voters, a 51.90% turnout rate. This follows a similar declining trend in the past few years, where 2021 saw a turnout of 56.65% while 2023 only saw 53.01% of students at the polls.

Turnout History

Here is an interactive graph on the College turnout. Tap or hover over the graph to see the rankings and turnout rate for the departments.

The Geography department continues its incredible rise in voter turnout, this year reaching over 70% voter turnout, dethroning PolSc's performance of 64.98% in 2023. PolSc and Psych meanwhile maintain a zigzagging trajectory, heavily influencing the College's overall turnout in the previous years.

A most notable change from previous years, however, is the Philosophy department's meteoric fall from having the third-highest turnout rate last year to the lowest of all the departments this year, possibly attributable to the lack of a Philo department representative candidate.

Collegewide Results

Breaking SALiGAN sa CSSP's hold over the standard bearer positions in the past several years, especially over the Chairship, BUKLOD CSSP gained the Chair and Vice Chair positions, with independent candidates only able to secure the CSSP Representative position and the PolSc department representative post. SALiGAN sa CSSP still tops the councilorships with 4 seats and maintains their now-slimmer majority through a number of department representative positions.

While the turnout rate continues to trend slightly downwards, the number of abstentions slowly continues to rise. For example, the Councilor spot in 2021 received only a hair over 100 abstentions, but now exceeds 200. A similar trend can be found across all standard-bearer positions as well.

Each position below will have an interactive graph that charts the department and level distribution of votes. You may refine which votes you'd like to see by clicking a subsection of the graph. On desktop, you can hover for exact numbers.

Standard Bearers & Councilors

Chair BUK

The chairship was closely contested with BUK Macam netting the win with 452 votes and SAL Patawaran receiving 425 votes, a mere 27 vote difference. A considerable number of voters (230) still abstained however, with PolSc providing nearly 25% of the abstentions.

While SAL Patawaran received a relatively well-distributed number of votes across the College's eight departments, BUK Macam received over 56% of her votes from her home department Psychology, presenting once again the sheer gravity of Psych's numbers as the College's largest department.

Vice Chair BUK

The vice chairship is slightly less contested, with a difference of 51 votes for both candidates. However, such margins are still quite narrow. SAL Arceo received a slimmer share of votes, while abstentions for the position rose all the way to over 25%.

The vote distribution story remains the same here, with BUK Felices receiving even more of her votes from Psych and even less of her vote share from PolSc.

CSSP Rep IND

IND Cruz wins the uncontested CSSP Representative position with a supermajority. However, she still receives over 350 abstentions, most of which coming from the Psych department.

Her vote distribution, however, is a broad cross-section of the College, implying general, widespread support-- an especially important point considering the complete vacancy of the USC's university-wide positions.

Councilors SAL BUK

Among the councilor candidates, no candidates are voted by more than half of the voters, with only SAL Ochosa and SAL Gaspar cracking less than one-third of non-voter ballots.

The top six candidates are able to net at least a third of votes, with SAL Alfonso and BUK Pascua able to net over 40% votes, while SAL Escototo and BUK Labiste barely cross one-thirds.

SALiGAN sa CSSP candidates consistently receive a broad distribution of votes, while BUKLOD CSSP retain their dominance primarily in PolSc and Psych.

The Councilorships are quite numerous and have had to be made smaller for readability of the rest of the article. If you'd like to see and play with them at full size, you can do so here on Observable.

BUK Matandac finds difficulty reaching one-third of voters, with most of his home department of Lingg, remaining non-voters for his Councilorship. It remains to be seen for the future of the term if this will lead to problems with representation or provide a unique perspective for the Student Council's endeavors collegewide.

Departmental Results ▶

Department-specific results and trends

Introduction