Philippine House of Representatives elections, 2013

Electoral system

The election for seats in the House of Representatives is done via parallel voting. A voter has two votes: one for one's local district, and another via the party-list system. A candidate is not allowed to stand for both ballots, and parties participating in the district elections would have to ask for permission on the Commission on Elections, with major parties not allowed to participate in the party-list election.

Election via the districts

Each district sends one representative to the House of Representatives, with the winner with the highest number of votes winning that district's seat. The representatives from the districts comprise at most 80% of the seats.

Election via the party-list system

In the party-list system, the parties contesting the election represent a sector, or several sectors, or an ethnic group. In determining the winners, the entire country is treated as one "district". Each party that surpasses the 2% election threshold automatically wins one seat, they can win an additional number of seats in proportion to the number of votes they received, but they can't have more than three seats. The representatives elected via the party-list system, also known as "sectoral representatives" should comprise at least 20% of the seats. However, since the winners from the parties that surpass the 2% threshold had not reached the 20% quota ever since the party-list system was instituted, the parties that received less than 1% of the first preference vote are given one seat each until the 20% quota has been filled up.

Campaigning

The parties contesting the district elections campaign at the district level; there is no national-level campaigning. While no party has been able to win a majority of seats in the House of Representatives since the 1987 elections, the party of the incumbent president had usually controlled the chamber in the phenomenon known locally as the "Padrino System" or patronage politics, with other parties aligning themselves with the president's policies in exchange for pork barrel and future political favors.

While the parties contesting the Senate election grouped themselves into two major electoral alliances (Team PNoy and the United Nationalist Alliance), the constituent parties of those alliances separately contested the elections to the House of Representatives. However, as stated above, the parties will again coalesce once the 16th Congress of the Philippines convenes.

District changes

Reapportioning (redistricting) the number of seats is either via national reapportionment after the release of every census, or via piecemeal redistricting for every province or city. National reapportionment has not happened since the 1987 constitution took effect, and aside from piecemeal redistricting, the apportionment was based on the ordinance from the constitution, which was in turn based from the 1980 census.

These are the following laws pertaining to redistricting that were passed by Congress. While a locality that has a minimum of 250,000 people is constitutionally entitled to one district representative, Congress should enact a law in order for it to take effect. The creation of new districts may be politically motivated, in order to prevent political allies (or even opponents) from contesting one seat.

Bukidnon, Cotabato, Palawan and Quezon City received additional representatives in the upcoming Congress.

The number of new legislative districts may also increase the seats allocated for party-list representatives: for every five new legislative districts, one seat for a party-list representative is also created.

Marginal seats

These are seats where the winning margin was 3% or less, politicians may choose to run under a different political party as compared to 2010. This excludes districts where the nearest losing candidate or that candidate's party is not contesting the election, or districts that were redistricted.

Retiring and term-limited incumbents

These are the incumbents who are not running for a seat in the House of Representatives, and are not term limited:

Open seat gains

*Kaka Bag-ao is a party–list representative for Akbayan who ran in Dinagat Islands district under the Liberal Party and won.

District elections

Only the Liberal Party can win the election outright by placing candidates in a majority of seats. With 292 seats, including seats reserved for sectoral representatives, 147 seats are needed for a majority, and only the Liberal Party is contesting more than 150 seats.

The Liberal Party did win a near majority of the district seats. They are expected to form a coalition with other Team PNoy component parties, other parties, most independents, and most party-list representatives for a large working majority. Lakas-CMD is expected to form the minority bloc anew, while the United Nationalist Alliance and left-leaning representatives may join either bloc.

A total of six independents won, one less than in 2010.

The vote totals below were collected from the results displayed from the COMELEC's "Transparency" server. These are partial and unofficial. The seats won are the ones which had been officially proclaimed by the COMELEC.

Party-list election

The Commission on Elections was supposed to release results for the party-list election along with the results for the Senate election; however, the commission suspended the release of results after questions of whether to include votes for the twelve disqualified parties, although not with finality, were to be included or not. Canvassing of results for the party-list election resumed on May 19 after the 12 senators-elect were already proclaimed, with the commission meeting to determine on what to do with the votes of the twelve disqualified parties. On May 22, the commission announced that they will proclaim the winning parties, but not the number of seats.

*2 seats still to be decided; while the Senior Citizens party-list has been approved its registration, its nominees had not yet been proclaimed due to an ongoing dispute on two sets of nominees.

Aftermath

Preliminary results states that President Aquino's allies winning an overwhelming majority of seats in the House of Representatives. This makes Aquino the only president enjoy majorities in both houses of Congress since the People Power Revolution of 1986. This is seen as an endorsement of the voters of Aquino's reformist agenda; although several key wins elsewhere by the United Nationalist Alliance and its allies would mean that Aquino's chosen successor may face a significant challenge in the 2016 presidential election.

Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, Jr. is seen to keep his speakership position with the Liberals winning at least 100 out of the 234 district seats. Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales II said that a great majority of incumbents are poised to successfully defend their seats, and that the Liberal Party are to be the single largest party in the lower house. The Nacionalista Party has at least 15 winning representatives, "a substantial number" of the 40 incumbents Nationalist People's Coalition are to hold their seats, and the 34-member National Unity Party House leader Rodolfo Antonino expects Belmonte to be reelected as speaker. The United Nationalist Alliance won three seats in Metro Manila, and at least 2 more seats outside the metropolis.

Election for the Speakership

15th Congress Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, Jr. easily won reelection for the speakership. The race for minority leader, usually given to the person finishing second in the speakership race, was narrowly won by Ronaldo Zamora over Ferdinand Martin Romualdez. There was one abstention, from Toby Tiangco, who wanted to be an independent. Belmonte also abstained from voting, while Romaualdez and Zamora voted for themselves; if Belmonte only had one opponent he would've voted for his opponent, and his opponent would've voted for him (as seen in the 15th Congress speakership election). Since there were more than two nominees, the traditional courtesy votes did not push through.