If the landslide winners are even half as bad as the American press is portraying them (and by "bad" I mean by the standards of those who voted for them, not our standards) that should prove once and for all that the psychologically based vote getting techniques (including lying) work a lot better than straightforward presentations of facts and logic.

This is not to say that most people fall for this stuff. But in most cases, if deceptive advertising techniques changes the mind of even 10% of those who would normally have voted for the better candidate, that is enough to change the outcome. I say the "better" candidate because the one who is less willing to engage in these techniques is probably the better one and certainly the more honest one.

This wasn't that big a problem when the candidates and their positions were fairly close. But now it is. Elections were supposed to eliminate kings and queens once and for all by putting the power back in the hands of the people. And it worked pretty well until those kings and queens realized they could hire advertising agencies and psychologists to fool a decent proportion of those who are presently allowed to decide who rules.

To state the obvious, this isn't the first time that a complete disaster has controlled the government of the Philippines.

Shocking to learn that human psychology plays a role in elections.

Your fantastic insights are wasted here. You should take this to the press. Politicians lying to win elections is something they'll want to hear about. While you're at it let them know what else women shouldn't be allowed to do. Such a clown. Honest question, do you wear full clown make up and wig while posting?

Why would we need to prove what we already know to be true?

I mean, it's not true in the absolute terms you put it, of course. In some elections, facts and logic win out. In other elections, lying wins out. Thus it has always been, and always will be. There haven been times when one is more effective than the other. There are places where one is more effective than the other. It seems that we're in a time (greatly assisted by social media) when the lies have the upper hand, especially in the US. Is this a trend that will continue, or will the pendulum eventually swing back? Honestly, I'm not sure any more. I think it will eventually, but it might take a while.

I think it is dangerous to just look at this phenomena as "just lying" or "just human psychology".

We can try to express what is happening by making an analogy to older media technology: It is the equivalent to sabotaging printing presses, trucks and roads so newspapers that print facts about certain candidates have a harder time getting to the shops. You then replace the empty spots on the shelves with ads for your candidate.

Of course, it is really more nefarious than that, since the efforts are targeted using big data-sets. Basically, companies will be spying on most of what you do (and I mean most, a lot of what isn't happening online will be extrapolated) and brokers will sell this surveillance to what is essentially private intelligence contractors that offer services for political campaigns. These will grease the "grassroots"-campaigns, which is a lot easier when you basically are handed a list of what people do, what they earn, how the lean politically and what motivates them.

Of course, since the actions take place in unregulated territory, what is being done is not formally a crime. Similarly, the companies who own the technology has no financial interest in admitting the weaknesses or showing its internal workings, so there isn't much to base civil liability on.

Sure. And I'd also say there's another layer - appeals to emotion. Cold hard facts or lies alone aren't enough - campaigns often are based on emotional appeals, which can be founded on lies, facts, or most often, something in between.

Since when and where have politics had anything to do with facts and logic?

I heard Bongobongo saying "rice for filipinos" when in fact he said something like filipinos should raise , both would surely have been good speeches and pretty much mean the same in this country.

I have no illusions about what politics is.

But if I rebuild the main roads so the only businesses people can easily access are the ones I choose, it would be absurd to call what I am doing advertising or campaigning.

Yet this is in essence the business model on offer for political advertising online. You can in many cases close the information ecosystem for your targeted groups, so that any relationship with fact is irrelevant. Not for everyone necessarily, but the surveillance you are paying for will tell you who you can do it to.

Case in point: In recent years we have seen some politicians win elections by telling people that the disease that kills them is harmless, and that the medicine that can stop it is dangerous. I get that these things become normalized, but if we take two seconds to reflect on that, we should see that it is completely and utterly insane.

OP is an Odd takeaway that doesn’t make much sense. Duterte has a very high approval and the guy that won is most perceived to continue his policies.

The Philippines is an excellent case study in democratic elections in a country where social media manipulation and social media campaigns are pretty much completely unregulated.

It is not a case of "heroes vs villains". Every candidate in this election tried to do the same thing. The only victims are voters.