THE 2028 PUZZLE: Does the Youth’s Vote Hold the Missing Piece?

After the 2025 midterm elections, the youth’s vote quickly emerged as the election’s biggest story. For many, the surprise victories of Bam Aquino and Kiko Pangilinan seemed to confirm that younger Filipinos could decide the 2028 presidential race.

The conclusion seemed easy to draw: if young voters make up the largest group, then they must hold the key to victory.

But elections are rarely solved by finding one answer.

Like a puzzle, the Filipino electorate is made up of different pieces shaped by age, experiences, communities, and circumstances. The youth may be one of the most visible pieces, but the full picture of the 2028 election can only be understood once every factor is placed together.

The Most Visible Piece

The largest piece often catches attention first, but it does not always reveal the entire picture. 

Millennials and Gen Z made up 41,412,361 of the country’s 68,431,965 registered voters in the 2025 elections, accounting for 60.5% of the electorate. Combined with the record of 81.65% voter turnout during the midterms, the numbers appeared to reinforce a simple conclusion: win young voters, and the rest will follow. 

But elections are rarely decided by a single demographic.

Age may explain who is voting, but it says far less about why they vote the way they do. And if the youth’s vote is only one piece of the electorate, what shapes the rest?

The Pieces Behind the Numbers 

A large voting bloc does not necessarily vote as one.

While younger Filipinos make up the country’s largest voting bloc, they do not necessarily share the same political priorities. 

According to Pulse Asia’s March 2025 Ulat ng Bayan, Filipinos consistently identified the following as the country’s most urgent concerns:

• Inflation
• higher wages 
• graft and corruption 
• criminality 
• poverty
• job creation 

How these issues affect voters, however, often depends on their local realities. A voter living in a highly urbanized area may feel inflation through rising transportation and housing costs, while someone in another province may be more concerned about employment opportunities or access to basic services.

A first-time voter in Metro Manila does not necessarily weigh the same concerns as one in Eastern Samar, BARMM, Cebu, or Bukidnon. Pulse Asia’s regional findings show that the issues Filipinos consider most urgent vary across different parts of the country. 

The youth’s vote, then, is not a single political movement but millions of individual choices shaped by different experiences and priorities. Looking at age alone cannot explain how Filipinos vote. To understand the 2028 election, the rest of the electoral picture matters just as much.

The Pieces of Influence

Elections are shaped not only by individual choices but also by the communities that shape those choices.

Among the most closely watched are religious organizations, particularly the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC), whose endorsements have drawn national attention in successive elections. 

The INC endorsed: 

• Benigno Aquino III (2010)
• Rodrigo Duterte and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for vice president
• Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte (2022)

The INC’s practice of bloc voting is rooted in its “vote as one” doctrine, under which church leaders announce a slate of endorsed candidates before election day and encourage members to vote in unity. This coordinated endorsement has long drawn attention because it allows the church to mobilize support through its nationwide membership.

Yet history also shows that religious backing alone does not guarantee victory. In the 2016 vice presidential race, for instance, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. received the INC’s endorsement but narrowly lost to Leni Robredo. Six years later, Marcos won the presidency not through religious support alone, but through a broader coalition that extended across different sectors and regions.

Faith can strengthen a candidate’s reach, but it is rarely enough to decide a national election. It remains an important part of the electorate, but only one piece in a much larger picture. 

The Regional Piece

Voting is personal. But in the Philippines, it is often geographical. 

National elections may produce a single winner, but they are rarely won the same way everywhere. The 2022 presidential election revealed distinct regional strongholds, with Ferdinand Marcos Jr. dominating much of Northern Luzon while performing strongly across most regions nationwide. Political scientists have long identified regionalism as one of the country’s most enduring electoral cleavages, suggesting that where Filipinos live can shape political preferences as much as national issues themselves.

Regional loyalties, however, are rarely built by geography alone. They are reinforced through local political machines, where governors, mayors, and political clans connect national candidates to existing patronage and campaign networks that extend to the barangay level. 

Geography, then, becomes another part of the larger electoral picture, showing how place can influence the way people choose their leaders. 

The Hidden Pieces of Power

National elections may be decided nationwide, but they are built locally through the alliances, political machines, and grassroots networks that carry national campaigns into communities. 

That reality is reflected in the influence local officials continue to hold during election season. Their endorsements often provide national candidates with established campaign organizations, grassroots volunteers, and trusted community networks that are difficult to build from scratch. The persistence of political dynasties reinforces that advantage. Ahead of the 2025 midterm elections, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) reported that 71 of the country’s 82 governors belonged to political families. This highlights how political influence is often sustained across generations rather than rebuilt every election. 

Local political networks do not guarantee national victories. They do, however, help explain why presidential campaigns are rarely fought through national messaging alone. In Philippine elections, winning broad support has often meant building alliances that begin long before candidates step onto the national stage.

These local networks are another piece of the puzzle, helping explain why national victories are often built long before election day.

The Biggest Picture

The youth’s vote has become one of the defining stories of the 2025 elections. It has also become one of the most misunderstood.

Younger Filipinos remain a growing political force, but they do not vote in isolation. Like the rest of the electorate, younger Filipinos also weigh factors beyond age, including regional identities, religious communities, local political networks, and the economic realities of everyday life.

The road to 2028 may not belong to the candidate who simply wins over young voters. It may belong to the one who brings together the broadest coalition across generations, regions, and communities.

The youth’s vote may be an important piece of the 2028 puzzle, but it is only one of many that will shape the outcome. Winning Philippine elections has never depended on a single piece of the electorate but on bringing the right pieces together to build a winning coalition.