BAILIWICK & BALLOT

Party-list registration and representation across four elections, 2016 to 2025.

Votes & Seats

Geography, advocacy, arithmetic — what decides a party-list seat.

247,754The seat line, 2025 Murang Kuryente took the last seat on 0.62% of the vote. The line has sat near a quarter of a million for three cycles — 195,837 in 2019, 236,226 in 2022 — but as a share of the vote it has fallen at every election since 2016.
1 in 3Participants won a seat 155 groups ran in 2025 and 57 won. The ratio has barely moved in a decade — 46 of 115 in 2016, 51 of 134, 56 of 177, 57 of 155.
6Groups cleared 2% Akbayan, Tingog, 4Ps, ACT-CIS and Ako Bicol cleared 2% of the 39,611,775 votes the seats were allocated on, and hold 12 of the 64 seats; every other sitting representative comes from a group that never met the nominal threshold. Duterte Youth cleared it too, on 2,328,166 votes, but holds no seat: its registration was cancelled on 29 August 2025, after the election, and its three seats passed to Abono, Murang Kuryente and Ang Probinsyano. Twelve groups cleared 2% in 2016, then eight, then six, then six — while the field grew from 115 groups to 155.

Concentration against the seat line, 2025

All 155 groups on the 2025 ballot plotted.Horizontal: the share of a party-list's national vote from one region.Vertical: total national votes, on a log scale. Above the dashed line won a seat.

Won a seat (57) Counted, seat voided (1) Missed (97) Seat line — Murang Kuryente, 247,754 votes

The chart is wider than this screen — scroll it sideways →

Show all 155 groups as a table
GroupVotesLargest region %Largest regionResult
98.1%Abang Lingkod Won a seat on 274,735 votes, of which 98.1% came from the Negros Island Region alone. The most concentrated winner in either cycle.
12Winners above 80% Twelve groups took a seat while drawing more than four-fifths of their vote from one region. In 2022 the most extreme was Alona at 97%; now it's routine.
423,133Asenso Pinoy, 2025 The group that missed by about 4,200 votes in 2022 came back, nearly doubled its vote, and won — still 72% from Northern Mindanao.

Geographic Concentration

In 2025, of the 57 winners, twelve cleared 80% concentration and five cleared 90% — Abang Lingkod (98.1%, Negros), 4K (94.4%, Calabarzon), Swerte (92.1%, Northern Mindanao), Abono (91.0%, Ilocos) and Uswag Ilonggo (90.4%, Western Visayas).

Asenso Pinoy: 2022: 232,009 votes, 74.9% from Northern Mindanao, topped the region, missed the last seat by at most about 4,200. 2025: 423,133 votes, still 72% from the same region — and comfortably in. The approach didn't change. The base got bigger.

At province level it is sharper still. The regional view understates it. Measured by province, 19 of the 57 winners drew more than half their votes from a single province, thirty drew more than half from two, and nine took over 85% from two. Abang Lingkod took 97.5% from Negros Occidental alone; Swerte 91.4% from Bukidnon; Abono 90.2% from Pangasinan; 4K 87.2% from Quezon; Ako Bisaya 82.8% from Cebu. A third of the party-list bench is effectively a single-province operation.

The failures still cluster in the same place. API Party took 89.1% from Ilocos and got 170,571 votes — not enough. SBP took 88.2% from Metro Manila on 175,482. Angat took 71.1% from Soccsksargen on 228,680 and fell about 19,000 short. Concentration without sufficient base is the single most common way to lose.

Coverage: 2016 to 2025 · four elections · official COMELEC results

The bar has been getting lower for a decade

The seat line — the vote total of the last group to win a seat — has risen in absolute terms since 2019. Measured against the electorate it is competing for, it has fallen at every single election since 2016. More people are voting party-list, and the pool is growing faster than the bar.

What one seat costs, as a share of the vote

Each point is the last group to win a seat that year, expressed as a percentage of the votes the seats were allocated on. The figure under each point is that group's actual vote total. 2025 carries a second, dashed line: COMELEC allocated that year's seats twice, and the earlier allocation put the last seat at Philreca on 261,045.

The chart is wider than this screen — scroll it sideways →

0.60%0.65%0.70%0.75%Before the cancellation — 261,0450.74%240,723 votes20160.70%195,837 votes20190.64%236,226 votes20220.62%247,754 votes2025SEAT LINE AS A SHARE OF THE VOTE IT WAS ALLOCATED ON
2016 and 2019 from the official COMELEC canvass as tabulated for each election; 2022 and 2025 likewise, cross-checked against a full walk of COMELEC's own municipal canvass boards. Each year's table re-sums exactly to its published valid-vote total and seat count. The last winners were Agbiag! Timpuyog Ilocano (2016), Kabataan (2019), Akbayan (2022) and Murang Kuryente (2025). 2025's dashed line is the allocation COMELEC published on 16 May 2025, before the en banc cancelled Duterte Youth's registration on 29 August: the last seat went to Philreca on 261,045 of 41,950,292, which is 0.622%. The line in force now is Murang Kuryente on 247,754 of 39,611,775, or 0.625%. The two shares all but coincide because the cancellation took 2,338,564 votes out of the base and added a seat at the same time — which is why the second line sits almost on top of the 2025 point rather than above it.

What this means for a group deciding whether to register

Entry is measurably cheaper now, relative to the electorate, than at any point since 2016. A group needed 0.74% of the party-list vote to take the last seat in 2016. In 2025 it needed 0.62%. That is not a rounding difference — it is a sixth of the relative cost gone in three elections, while the absolute number of votes available grew by more than seven million.

The counterweight is honest: the field is more crowded. 115 groups ran in 2016 and 155 in 2025. But the number of winners rose too — 46 to 57 — and the seats available rose from 59 to 64.

Ballots that produced no party-list vote

Blank plus overvoted ballots, as a share of every ballot cast for the party-list contest. This is not a trend — 2019 is an outlier, and 2025 is the cleanest year in the series.

The chart is wider than this screen — scroll it sideways →

12%24%36%48%28.02%201641.04%201934.44%202226.85%2025SHARE OF BALLOTS THAT PRODUCED NO PARTY-LIST VOTE
Denominator in every year is ballots cast for the party-list contest. For 2022 and 2025 that is votes obtained plus blanks plus overvoted ballots, taken from COMELEC's canvass; for 2016 and 2019, valid plus invalid/blank votes as published. Four in ten party-list ballots produced nothing in 2019. Anyone presenting this as a smooth downward trend is reading it wrong.
ElectionBallots castValid votesNo voteSeat lineAs % of baseWinners
201644,980,36232,377,84128.02%240,7230.74%46 of 115
201947,296,44227,884,79041.04%195,8370.70%51 of 134
202255,915,06236,656,65934.44%236,2260.64%56 of 177
202557,350,97041,950,29226.85%247,754
261,045 before		0.625%
0.622% before		57 of 155

The last percentage is the seat line as a share of the votes the seats were allocated on, which is not always the valid-vote column beside it. For 2016 and 2019 the two are the same figure. For 2025 the allocation base is 39,611,775, not 41,950,292: Duterte Youth's 2,338,564 votes were lawfully cast and counted, and left the base only when the en banc cancelled its registration on 29 August 2025, three months after the election. For 2022 the two are the same figure, 36,656,659. An Waray's seat passed to Akbayan, the next group in rank, with no recomputation of the base, so 2022 excludes nothing — the base is valid votes less only the votes of a group whose registration was cancelled and whose seats were reallocated on a recomputed base, which is 2025 alone. The series falls at every election on either basis.

Coverage: 2016 to 2025 · COMELEC canvass statistics

Nearly half the turnout elected nobody — but far less of it than in 2022

Of the 57,350,970 ballots cast for the party-list in 2025, this is what happened to them:

12,066,810Left it blank Turned out, took a ballot, marked nothing in the party-list section. 21.04% of ballots cast.
12,558,134Backed a group that lost Votes for the 99 groups that won no seat — 29.9% of all party-list votes cast. Duterte Youth's 2,328,166 are in here: counted, then left electing nobody.
3,333,868Spoiled it Overvotes — more than one mark, so the party-list vote was void. 5.81% of ballots.

Together: 27,958,812 ballots, 48.8% of everyone who turned out, producing no representation at all. Two of those three are ballots — blank and spoiled — and the third is votes cast for groups that lost, so the sum is best read as turnout that elected nobody rather than as a vote total. On that reading it is 113 times the seat line. The opportunity in this system is not a sector nobody speaks for — it is that the system leaks nearly half its input, and an organised group can go and collect some of it.

ElectionBlank or spoiled ballotsVotes for groups that won no seatTogetherShare of ballots cast× the seat line
201612,602,5217,111,50619,714,02743.8%82×
201919,411,6526,377,44325,789,09554.5%132×
202219,258,40310,901,14230,159,54553.9%128×
202515,400,67812,558,13427,958,81248.8%113×

All four elections on one denominator: ballots cast for the party-list contest. Blanks and overvotes can be told apart only for 2022 and 2025, where COMELEC publishes both, so the first column combines them in every year rather than showing a split for two years and not the other two. The second column is each year's valid votes minus the published totals of that year's winners — which is why the 2025 figure is 77,195 higher than a sum over the precinct file: one of the 155 groups on the 2025 ballot has no row in it. Click any column to re-sort.

The leak has changed shape, and the part that is growing is the part a sector can consolidate. Blank and spoiled ballots fell from 19,411,652 in 2019 to 15,400,678 in 2025. Over the same period votes for groups that won no seat rose at every election — 6,377,443, then 10,901,142, then 12,558,134. More people are marking the party-list ballot and a larger share of them are getting nothing back for it. The waste is moving out of the blank ballot and into fragmentation, which is exactly the failure Health and OFW are examples of: enough votes, spread across too many vehicles.

The single biggest change since 2022

The blank-ballot rate fell from 31.27% to 21.04% — and across the 84 provinces that have returns in both years it fell in every single one, without an exception. On those 84 provinces that is about 5.3 million ballots that used to produce nothing and now carry a vote, more than twenty times what it takes to win a seat.

Read carefully, this cuts both ways. The pool an entrant is fishing in got smaller. But it also means the electorate is markedly more willing to use this part of the ballot than it was three years ago, and a group registering now meets a more engaged voter than one registering in 2022 did.

Both years come from COMELEC's own canvass, on the same denominator: ballots cast for the party-list contest, which equals votes obtained plus blanks plus overvoted ballots. An earlier version of this page used a third-party precinct file and the wrong overvote field; those figures were low. The province-level comparison runs on the 84 provinces with returns in both years — 2025 adds the two Maguindanao provinces, which have no 2022 row — and the exact fall across them is 5,299,807 blank ballots.

The blank ballot is still the largest single component, and it is still wildly uneven by region.

RegionBlank ballots 2025Rate 2022Rate 2025ChangeSize of the pool
Central Luzon1,311,58627.8%20.1%-7.7
Calabarzon1,221,71625.0%15.6%-9.4
Central Visayas912,11737.4%24.0%-13.4
Eastern Visayas796,62135.6%29.0%-6.6
Bicol796,20136.9%23.1%-13.8
Davao Region790,79037.0%28.4%-8.5
Metro Manila775,87620.1%12.8%-7.3
Negros Island Region762,516—29.5%—
Northern Mindanao626,61839.6%23.0%-16.6
Western Visayas605,48231.7%22.6%-9.1
Ilocos579,76529.9%18.2%-11.6
Zamboanga Peninsula559,93941.6%24.1%-17.5
Caraga488,14140.0%30.3%-9.7
Cagayan Valley463,98835.9%23.2%-12.7
Soccsksargen438,08535.2%19.9%-15.2
Mimaropa360,56236.5%21.3%-15.2
BARMM287,60226.2%18.2%-8.0
Cordillera181,10134.1%19.2%-14.9

All eighteen regions, ordered by the size of the blank-ballot pool. Click any column to re-sort — by rate rather than volume, Caraga leads at 30.3% and Metro Manila trails at 12.8%, which is a different ranking from the one below.

Caraga still has the highest rate in the country and Metro Manila the lowest. In every one of the eighteen, the blank-ballot pool alone is several times the number of votes needed for a seat — Cordillera, the smallest pool in the country, is still 181,101 blank ballots against a seat line of 247,754, and the median region holds more than two seats' worth.

Why this matters for the registration question

Concentration analysis tells you where the votes already go. The undervote map tells you where they currently go nowhere — voters who showed up and found nothing on the party-list ballot worth marking. That is a cleaner definition of an opportunity gap than any vote-share measure, and it points somewhere different: not to the crowded bailiwicks of Calabarzon and Ilocos, but to Caraga, Eastern Visayas, Negros and Davao.

It is also the number that makes a sectoral pitch concrete. A group does not have to take votes off an incumbent.

Coverage: 2016 to 2025 · sector view · the two CPBRD exhibits below run 2007–2022 and the 20th Congress

The third gap: which sectors go unrepresented

Party-list seats by advocacy — 17th to 20th Congress

CPBRD publishes this for the 20th Congress alone. This is the same question asked of four, on this project’s own advocacy labels. Pick a Congress. The scale is a fixed 0 to 15 seats in all four and the rows keep one order — by the 20th — so a sector can be followed across the toggle. Categories holding no seat stay visible, because a sector falling to zero is the finding.

Seats051015

2025 election · 64 total seats · 16 of 24 advocacy labels hold a seat

Multi-sectoral Groups13
Regional Development11
Poverty Reduction/Urban and Rural Concerns8
Laborers and Professionals5
Farmers and Fisherfolk4
National Political Parties4
Electric Cooperatives and Electricity Consumers3
Senior Citizens and Retirees3
Public Safety and Security2
Transportation2
Education2
SMEs and Consumer Rights2
Women2
Youth1
Indigenous Peoples1
Others (mostly nationalistic)1
Sports0
Health0
Overseas Filipino Workers0
Persons with Disabilities0
Environment0
Internet Connectivity0
Local Political Parties0
Tourism0
Seats are the panel’s own per-year seat counts, not a vote threshold. The four Congresses hold 59, 61, 63 and 64 party-list seats; the 19th is the post-cancellation roster and the 20th’s 64 is itself a COMELEC ruling, both explained under the figure further down this page. Regional Development combines this project’s Regional Political Parties and Regional Groups into one row, as CPBRD does. The un-merged version, with its data table, is the figure headed Seats by sector, 17th to 20th Congress below.

Party-lists by advocacy — 2016 to 2025

Change in the number of groups on the ballot carrying each advocacy, from 2016 to 2025. CPBRD’s own registration series stops at 2022 and counts registered organisations; this one runs to 2025 and counts the groups voters could actually choose. Hover a row for all four election-year counts.

The population is the groups that appeared on the ballot — 115 in 2016, 134 in 2019, 177 in 2022 and 155 in 2025 — not the register, because this project holds a per-group registered list for 2025 alone.

Growing Flat or shrinking — the opportunity set Not determinable from public record
155 of 155 groups classified in 202524 advocacy labelshover a row for 2016–2025 counts
−100%0+250%
Women+250%
Multi-sectoral Groups+210%
Sports+200%
Youth+100%
Internet Connectivity+100%
Public Safety and Security+80%
Indigenous Peoples+67%
Transportation+67%
Poverty Reduction/Urban and Rural Concerns+55%
National Political Parties+50%
Regional Development+42%
Senior Citizens and Retirees+33%
Others (mostly nationalistic)+25%
Health+0%
Persons with Disabilities+0%
Farmers and Fisherfolk-9%
Laborers and Professionals-17%
SMEs and Consumer Rights-33%
Education-60%
Overseas Filipino Workers-67%
Environment-100%
Electric Cooperatives and Electricity Consumersnew
Tourismnew
Local Political Parties—

These advocacy labels are this project’s own and they are not verified. They are what each group says it represents, read from COMELEC’s registered names, from the groups’ own materials and from news coverage — not from any official register of sectors, because none is published. Of the 82 groups that carried no coding at all, 12 were placed by COMELEC’s own registered name, 69 by their public materials, and 1 could not be determined from public record at all — and it is counted into no sector here rather than swept into Multi-sectoral to tidy the chart. It was on the 2022 ballot alone, so neither end of this chart rests on it. Every group on the 2025 ballot carries a label, but 5 of them rest on evidence this project rates weak — a registered name and nothing more, or a group whose own words name no constituency. That is the gap, and only COMELEC can close it.

Both charts above use one label set and one population, so they can be read against each other. They are not CPBRD’s and they are not COMELEC’s. The two CPBRD exhibits below are reproduced exactly as published, in CPBRD’s own categories, and answer a different question on a different basis; no attempt is made to map one taxonomy onto the other.

The two views above are geographic — where votes concentrate, and where they go nowhere. This one is sectoral, and it comes from Congress's own research service. Given the base rate at the top of this page, the bar is low. The question this chart asks is who still isn't clearing it.

Registered party organizations by sector, 2007 → 2022

Each row runs from the count at the start of the window to the count in 2022. The hollow dot is the earlier year, the filled dot 2022. These are small numbers — most categories hold fewer than ten organisations — so they are shown as counts rather than as percentage change, which would make a rise from one to five the loudest bar on the chart.

Growing Flat or shrinking — the opportunity set earlier year → 2022
0102030
Multisectoral
6 → 31
Political party
1 → 5
Urban poor
2 → 8
Transportation
2 → 8
Livelihood*
1 → 4
Labor
4 → 14
Consumer*
2 → 6
Regional party
7 → 20
Cooperatives
2 → 5
Education
3 → 6
Athletics / sports
1 → 2
Socio-civic*
1 → 2
Professionals
5 → 9
OFW / seafarers
4 → 6
Agriculture / farmers
8 → 11
Crime / anti-corruption
5 → 6
Youth and family
5 = 5
Women
3 = 3
Elderly / senior*
3 = 3
Handicapped / PWD
2 = 2
Economic / business
7 → 6
Health*
7 → 6
Indigenous peoples
7 → 5
National / patriotic
9 → 1
Source: CPBRD Policy Brief 2026-6, Table 3, citing data analysis by Prof. Panao. Rows marked * (Livelihood, Consumer, Socio-civic, Elderly/senior, Health) had no 2007 baseline and run from 2010. The categories that grew are the broad ones — multisectoral, political party, urban poor, labor.

Party-list seats by sector or advocacy, 20th Congress

Sixty-four seats. Regional development alone takes a fifth of them.

Regional development
13
Labor / workers
8
Multisectoral
8
Agri / farmers / fisherfolk
6
Social services
5
Human rights
4
Women / youth / family
4
Community dev / urban poor
3
Energy consumers
3
Cooperatives
3
Transport
2
Governance
2
Senior citizens
2
MSMEs
1
Source: CPBRD Policy Brief 2026-6, Figure 1. Indigenous peoples, PWDs and overseas workers appear nowhere in this chart — the brief notes they are "barely represented, if at all," except where a multisectoral group claims them.

Seats by sector, 17th to 20th Congress

The same question as the figure above, asked of four Congresses instead of one, and on this project’s own sector coding rather than CPBRD’s. Every sector that has ever held a party-list seat since 2016. Pick a Congress. The scale is the same 0 to 15 seats in all four and the rows stay in one order — by the 20th Congress — so a sector can be followed across the toggle; from the 18th on, each bar carries its change from the 17th.

Multi-sectoral Groups
13+6
Poverty Reduction/Urban and Rural Concerns
8+3
Regional Groups
6+2
Regional Political Parties
5+1
Laborers and Professionals
5±0
Farmers and Fisherfolk
4−5
National Political Parties
4−1
Electric Cooperatives and Electricity Consumers
3+3
Senior Citizens and Retirees
3+1
Public Safety and Security
2+1
Education
2−2
SMEs and Consumer Rights
2−2
Transportation
2+2
Women
2±0
Youth
1±0
Indigenous Peoples
1−1
Others (mostly nationalistic)
1+1
Sports
0−2
Health
0−1
Overseas Filipino Workers
0−1
Persons with Disabilities
0±0
Show all four Congresses as a table
Sector17th18th19th20thChange
Multi-sectoral Groups771113+6
Poverty Reduction/Urban and Rural Concerns510108+3
Regional Groups4356+2
Regional Political Parties4555+1
Laborers and Professionals5535±0
Farmers and Fisherfolk9564−5
National Political Parties5414−1
Electric Cooperatives and Electricity Consumers0323+3
Senior Citizens and Retirees2123+1
Public Safety and Security1642+1
Education4322−2
SMEs and Consumer Rights4112−2
Transportation0132+2
Women2112±0
Youth1221±0
Indigenous Peoples2111−1
Others (mostly nationalistic)0001+1
Sports2110−2
Health1110−1
Overseas Filipino Workers1110−1
Persons with Disabilities0010±0
Built from the panel, not from CPBRD: these are this page’s own sectors, the coding the sector table and the briefing panel use, with each year’s seats taken from the panel’s seat counts rather than from any vote threshold. The four Congresses hold 59, 61, 63 and 64 party-list seats; the 19th is the post-cancellation roster, 63 seats across 56 groups, the same convention this page applies everywhere. The 20th's 64 is itself a ruling. COMELEC's own canvass computation apportioned 63, from 253 legislative district representatives; the en banc then resolved unanimously to allot 64, on the ground that 63 seats is 19.8738% of the House — mathematically below the 20% the Constitution requires — where 64 is 20.1258%. Both figures are COMELEC's and they are sequential rather than contradictory, which is also what reconciles the rosters: 54 groups over 63 seats in May, less Duterte Youth, plus the 64th seat and its three reallocated, gives the 57 groups over 64 seats this page carries. The en banc resolution itself is not in this project's hands; it is reported, with the Supervisory Committee's manifestation quoted, rather than read. The 20th Congress total, 64, is the one figure the two taxonomies share, and it is the only cross-check available between them: CPBRD’s fourteen categories above are a different classification of the same 64 seats, published in Policy Brief 2026-6 and reproduced here as published. No attempt is made to map one onto the other, and this figure carries no enumerated-sector split for the same reason — deciding which of these sectors answer to the enumerated list in RA 7941 is a coding judgement this project has not made, and inferring one would put a third taxonomy on the page silently. What the series shows without any of that is the vote finding in seats. Multi-sectoral Groups go 7 to 13 and Poverty Reduction 5 to 8, while Farmers and Fisherfolk go 9 to 4, Education 4 to 2 and SMEs 4 to 2. Health, overseas workers and sports each held a seat earlier in the series and hold none in the 20th; persons with disabilities held one only in the 19th. The five broadest categories — multi-sectoral, poverty reduction, the two regional families and national political parties — held 25 of the 59 seats in the 17th Congress and 36 of the 64 in the 20th.

Sectors holding no seat in 2025, across four elections

Each line is a sector's combined vote as a multiple of that year's seat line. The dashed rule is one seat. A filled dot means the sector held at least one seat that year; a hollow dot means it held none.

One seat Held a seat that year Held none

Health

1.66× the seat line · 411,127 votes across 3 groups · was 2.87× in 2016, 2.03× in 2019, 2.78× in 2022

16192225

Held a seat in 2016, 2019, 2022. Best in 2025: ANAKALUSUGAN, 154,121 — short by at most about 93,500.

Overseas Filipino Workers

1.24× the seat line · 306,839 votes across 2 groups · was 3.11× in 2016, 2.21× in 2019, 2.98× in 2022

16192225

Held a seat in 2016, 2019, 2022. Best in 2025: OFW, 246,609 — short by at most about 1,100.

Persons with Disabilities

0.87× the seat line · 214,605 votes across 1 group · was 0.49× in 2016, — in 2019, 1.65× in 2022

16192225

Held a seat in 2022. Best in 2025: P3PWD, 214,605 — short by at most about 33,000.

Internet Connectivity

0.57× the seat line · 141,041 votes across 1 group · was 0.14× in 2016, 0.08× in 2019, 0.48× in 2022

16192225

Has never won a seat. Best in 2025: WIFI, 141,041 — short by at most about 107,000.

Sports

0.53× the seat line · 131,724 votes across 2 groups · was 3.21× in 2016, 1.69× in 2019, 1.24× in 2022

16192225

Held a seat in 2016, 2019, 2022. Best in 2025: GILAS, 96,646 — short by at most about 151,000.

Sector assignment is per organisation and inherited across elections through a name crosswalk of 307 groups, so a group keeps one sector as its name changes. The seed is Rappler's 2019 survey of all 134 groups on that ballot, whose national, regional and local political-party categories come from a COMELEC list; the remaining high-vote groups were classified by name and known affiliation. Between 95% and 100% of each election's votes carry a sector. Barangay Health Wellness is not counted under Health: COMELEC registers it as a regional political party, and this chart follows the registered type where COMELEC supplies it. 2025 votes are the published total for each of the 57 seat-winners and the precinct total for every other group; since the precinct file is never above published, every 2025 sector total here is a floor and every shortfall a maximum. Overseas absentee votes are included — they are 199,230 nationally and they matter to exactly one of these sectors. H.E.L.P. Pilipinas stands on the ballot under that name and reaches the broadcaster feed as "PILIPINAS"; the crosswalk held them as two entities until 11 September 2026, which put its 157,028 votes under Others rather than Multi-sectoral.

The argument this changes

Health and OFW are not sectors nobody speaks for. They are sectors that had a seat and lost it while their constituency kept producing enough votes to hold one.

Health is the clearest case in the dataset: at least 411,127 votes in 2025 across three groups, 1.66× the seat line, and no seat at all. Anakalusugan came closest and still fell about 93,500 short. It held a seat in 2016, 2019 and 2022.

OFW is the tightest margin on the board, and by a wider distance than this page used to say. At least 306,839 votes across two groups, 1.24× the line. OFW Partylist finished at most about 1,100 votes short of the last seat — not a municipality, a large barangay. It, too, held a seat in all three previous elections.

That figure was wrong here until 11 September 2026, and wrong in the direction that understated the opportunity. The earlier "13,925 short" subtracted a domestic-only total from an overseas-inclusive seat line: the broadcaster feed these figures came from carries no overseas absentee rows at all, and it is rescaled to the national total, which lifts ordinary groups about 0.55% and leaves any group with a real overseas vote several per cent low. OFW Partylist polled 245,872 in that precinct file, including 13,147 overseas — for the one sector on this page where overseas votes are concentrated.

That is a materially easier conversation than the one the single-year data supported. The pitch is not "your sector is invisible." It is "your sector was represented until 2025, still turns out enough votes to be represented, and is losing the seat to fragmentation."

One limit on the arithmetic: adding two groups' votes together does not mean a merged group would receive the sum — voters chose a specific vehicle. What it establishes is that the constituency exists and is addressable at that scale.

Every sector against the seat line, four elections

The same rows as the table below, drawn. Each bar is that sector’s whole vote as a multiple of that year’s seat line, on one scale across all four panels, with the seat line itself dashed at 1×. A filled bar means the sector held at least one seat that year; a hollow one means it polled that much and held none. A dash means no group in that sector polled that year. Rows are in 2025 vote order, the table’s own.

Sector2016201920222025
Multi-sectoral Groups15.9613.2727.3927.93
Poverty Reduction/Urban and Rural Concerns10.5918.3418.8519.64
National Political Parties9.769.973.2714.92
Regional Political Parties9.8613.2910.1913.79
Regional Groups8.707.0013.2312.83
Laborers and Professionals10.079.647.4711.75
Youth†1.262.774.8010.70
Farmers and Fisherfolk17.8611.729.638.76
Public Safety and Security2.8618.1211.026.20
Senior Citizens and Retirees5.213.035.055.93
Women5.713.172.914.76
SMEs and Consumer Rights8.915.643.574.15
Education11.686.144.143.93
Transportation0.031.367.423.76
Others (mostly nationalistic)0.551.441.043.39
Electric Cooperatives and Electricity Consumers—7.293.053.31
Indigenous Peoples2.442.224.092.24
Health2.872.032.781.66
Overseas Filipino Workers3.112.212.981.24
Persons with Disabilities0.49—1.650.87
Internet Connectivity0.140.080.480.57
Sports3.211.691.240.53

held a seatheld nonedashed line: that year’s seat line (1×)scale: 0 to 30× in every panel

Drawn from the same sector_year.csv as the table beneath it, so the two cannot disagree. The numbers themselves — votes, seats and group counts — stay in that table, which copies as CSV.
SectorVotes, 2025× the line — 16 / 19 / 22 / 25Seats 16 / 19 / 22 / 25Groups, 2025
Multi-sectoral Groups6,918,81315.96 / 13.27 / 27.39 / 27.937 / 7 / 11 / 1325
Poverty Reduction/Urban and Rural Concerns4,866,91510.59 / 18.34 / 18.85 / 19.645 / 10 / 10 / 816
National Political Parties3,697,1219.76 / 9.97 / 3.27 / 14.925 / 4 / 1 / 45
Regional Political Parties3,416,8969.86 / 13.29 / 10.19 / 13.794 / 5 / 5 / 56
Regional Groups3,179,5998.70 / 7.00 / 13.23 / 12.834 / 3 / 5 / 67
Laborers and Professionals2,910,50610.07 / 9.64 / 7.47 / 11.755 / 5 / 3 / 58
Youth†2,650,9081.26 / 2.77 / 4.80 / 10.701 / 2 / 2 / 12
Farmers and Fisherfolk2,170,65117.86 / 11.72 / 9.63 / 8.769 / 5 / 6 / 48
Public Safety and Security1,535,2312.86 / 18.12 / 11.02 / 6.201 / 6 / 4 / 26
Senior Citizens and Retirees1,468,5785.21 / 3.03 / 5.05 / 5.932 / 1 / 2 / 34
Women1,179,5005.71 / 3.17 / 2.91 / 4.762 / 1 / 1 / 27
SMEs and Consumer Rights1,027,4518.91 / 5.64 / 3.57 / 4.154 / 1 / 1 / 23
Education973,55511.68 / 6.14 / 4.14 / 3.934 / 3 / 2 / 24
Transportation932,5470.03 / 1.36 / 7.42 / 3.760 / 1 / 3 / 24
Others (mostly nationalistic)840,9610.55 / 1.44 / 1.04 / 3.390 / 0 / 0 / 13
Electric Cooperatives and Electricity Consumers819,226— / 7.29 / 3.05 / 3.310 / 3 / 2 / 33
Indigenous Peoples554,4212.44 / 2.22 / 4.09 / 2.242 / 1 / 1 / 12
Health411,1272.87 / 2.03 / 2.78 / 1.661 / 1 / 1 / 03
Overseas Filipino Workers306,8393.11 / 2.21 / 2.98 / 1.241 / 1 / 1 / 02
Persons with Disabilities214,6050.49 / — / 1.65 / 0.870 / 0 / 1 / 01
Internet Connectivity141,0410.14 / 0.08 / 0.48 / 0.570 / 0 / 0 / 01
Sports131,7243.21 / 1.69 / 1.24 / 0.532 / 1 / 1 / 02

Each sector's vote as a multiple of that year's seat line, which is the only way to compare across elections the bar and the electorate both moved in. A dash means no group in that sector polled that year. Sort by votes to rank 2025; read the series to see the direction. The 2025 column is the published total for seat-winners and the precinct total otherwise; 2016 to 2022 are on the panel's cross-year comparable basis, which is why a 2016 figure here can sit a few thousand votes from the official canvass total quoted on that year's chart. †Youth's 2025 multiple is 88% Duterte Youth, whose 2,328,166 votes were counted and whose seats were then voided; Kabataan holds the sector's one seat.

The specific constituencies are going backwards and the broad vehicles are absorbing the growth. Measured against each year’s own seat line, the four steepest falls since 2016 are Farmers and Fisherfolk 17.86× to 8.76×, Education 11.68× to 3.93×, SMEs and consumer rights 8.91× to 4.15×, and Sports 3.21× to 0.53×. Over the same four elections Multi-sectoral Groups went 15.96× to 27.93× and from 9 groups to 25, Poverty Reduction 10.59× to 19.64×, and National Political Parties 9.76× to 14.92×. (Youth’s 1.26× to 10.70× is the exception that proves the point about reading a single row: 88% of it is one group whose seats were voided.) That is the registration figure above seen from the vote side, on this project’s own data rather than someone else’s categories. Health and OFW are the two that fell just far enough to lose a seat while still polling above the bar — 2.87× to 1.66× and 3.11× to 1.24×.

Coverage: 2016 to 2025 · region and province · registered voters and turnout in all four elections · municipality detail in all four · blank ballots for 2022 and 2025

Where the votes are, and where they are not

Pick an election, then what to look at. Geography opens on a summary of every region — registered voters, turnout, party-list votes, blank votes and the three groups that took the most of that region's party-list vote — and can shade the provinces by any one of those. Party-list turns the map into one group's harvest map: its share of each province's party-list vote, which is comparable across years. Click any province, in either view, for its detail down to the municipality.

low high no data
84 provinces are mapped for 2016, 2019 and 2022, and 86 for 2025. Maguindanao was a single province in the first three elections and split in two after the 2022 vote, so the two shapes the map uses carry data only from 2025; the City of Isabela votes with Basilan and never appears separately in the returns, so its outline is drawn as part of Basilan’s. Group votes are shown where a group took at least 500 votes in a province, which retains about 97% of each year's vote; the province total used for shares is the full figure, so percentages are not inflated by the cut-off. Province totals for 2025 are the precinct file's own sums — 41,419,622 nationally, against the published 41,950,292, the difference being overseas and local absentee voting, which has no province. An earlier version of this page carried 2025 province totals from a different aggregation, and for three BARMM provinces those totals exceeded the number of voters who did not leave the party-list section blank — Lanao del Sur by 95,005 votes. They are now on one basis with everything else the map shows. Registered voters and turnout cover all four elections, from COMELEC’s published registered-voters-and-voters-who-voted tables: by province for 2016, when Metro Manila was published only as one region, so its four districts show no data that year; by city and municipality from 2019. They are the domestic automated canvass and leave out overseas voting, so they are never compared with a national ballots-cast figure. Blank votes exist for 2022 and 2025 only — COMELEC never published them below the national level for 2016 or 2019, and those results sites have been decommissioned — and they stay on the canvass basis the rest of the map uses, so a province’s blank rate is a share of its own canvassed ballots. The summary view adds each region’s map units together for every figure it shows, so a region’s turnout and its blank votes describe the same places: before 2025 BARMM leaves out Maguindanao, for the reason above, and in 2025 the Special Geographic Area counts in Region XII with Cotabato rather than in BARMM. Each region’s top three is summed from the 500-vote province figures, and is checked in the build to survive that cut-off in every region and every year; where a top-three group fell under 500 in any of the region’s provinces its share is marked “at least”. The 2022 group layer sits on two bases. COMELEC’s 2022 per-board results have refused access since 13 September 2026, so no province-level group figure for 2022 can come from COMELEC any more. Its official canvass, walked for this page before that, still gives every group’s national total and its three strongest regions: pick a group in 2022 and those regions are outlined, with the figures in the panel. The province shading and each region’s top three come from the OpenHalalan municipal returns, and they agree with that canvass — every region’s party-list total to the vote except BARMM, which lacks Maguindanao, and all 509 of the canvass’s group-by-region figures outside BARMM either equal or within the 500-vote cut-off. Click a province and the panel goes down to municipality level in every election. The municipality tables reproduce each year's province totals exactly: 2016, 2019 and 2022 from the OpenHalalan municipal returns, whose 2022 national party-list total reproduces this project's independent walk of all 1,659 COMELEC municipal canvass boards to the vote; 2025 from the precinct file. Each municipality carries the five groups that polled highest in it, so “where this group polls best” is exact down to the town wherever the group placed in that top five. Blank ballots by municipality exist for 2022 and 2025. The 2022 figures come from an independent re-walk of all 1,659 of COMELEC’s 2022 municipal canvass boards, done for this page because the original walk kept only the province aggregates: it reproduces the published national totals exactly — 55,915,062 ballots cast, 17,486,021 blank, 1,772,382 overvoted, 36,656,659 obtained — and the identity obtained + blank + overvoted = voters who actually voted holds on every one of the 1,659 boards. For 2022 the ten municipalities with the most blank ballots are carried in each province, which is what the panel shows; 2025 carries every municipality. For 2016 and 2019 no sub-national blank-ballot figure was ever published, and none exists to recover. Sulu and Lanao del Sur are hatched in 2016 and 2019: both had failures of election and disrupted canvassing in those years, and Sulu's party-list vote nearly doubled by 2022. Overseas and local absentee voting have no geography and are excluded from the map while still counting in every national total; the BARMM Special Geographic Area, carved out of Cotabato in 2023, is folded back into Cotabato, as is Taguig-Pateros into NCR's fourth district. Boundaries: faeldon/philippines-json-maps (MIT), PSGC as of 31 December 2023 — Negros Island Region did not exist then; the 2025 region summary follows COMELEC’s eighteen regions for that election, NIR included. Shading for a group runs on linear bins from zero to that group's highest province, so a province holding a small fraction of a group's peak reads as pale rather than dark; the blank-ballot, turnout, registered-voter and party-list-vote layers use quantile bins, which suit a well-spread measure, and the summary view shades each province by its whole region’s party-list vote.

One view, assembled · sectors 2016–2025 · regions 2025

Pick the room you're walking into

Everything above this point is national. An organisation's board is not national: it is a sector, or a region, or both. Choose one and this assembles its own view of the four questions — how many votes it already produces, how far that is from a seat, where those votes sit, and who is already collecting them there.

Party-list opportunity analysis · one briefing

Bailiwick & Ballot

Basis. 2025 figures throughout. For each of the 57 seat-winners this uses COMELEC’s published total; for every other group the reconciled precinct file, which is never above the published total where both exist. Every sector total here is therefore a floor and every shortfall a maximum, and each group’s own overseas absentee votes are included in it. The seat line is the lowest-polling winner’s published total.

A region counts as having a vehicle only where a group coded as a regional party or regional group drew at least 40% of its national vote from it — any group can be concentrated, and that does not make it a regional vehicle. That test is about the group, not the ground: it asks what share of a vehicle’s own vote comes from home, so each anchored vehicle is shown with the share of the region it actually holds beside it, which ranges from 2.0% to 45.1%. The home-region ask is the seat line scaled by the median share anchored vehicles actually drew from home in 2025, not the full line. Sector figures run 2016–2025; the region figures are 2025 only.

Full workings, sources and the four-election series:

Assembled from the same tables as every chart above, on the same 2025 basis: the published total for each of the 57 seat-winners, the precinct total for every other group, overseas absentee votes included. Sector totals and shortfalls are therefore floors and maxima respectively. A region counts as having a vehicle only where a group coded as a regional party or regional group drew at least 40% of its national vote from it — any group can be concentrated, and that does not make it a regional vehicle. The home-region ask of 192,753 votes is the seat line scaled by the 78% median share anchored vehicles actually drew from home in 2025, not the full line. A sector briefing carries its multiple of the seat line for all four elections; a region briefing is 2025 only. That is a limit of the sources rather than of the wiring: four of the six figures a region briefing rests on — registered voters, turnout, blank ballots and the blank rate — were never published below the national level before 2022, and the 40% anchoring test would need a per-year concentration pass that does not exist for 2016 or 2019.

What the arithmetic is for

If you are deciding whether to register, this is the shape of it

Everything above is diagnosis. This is the part that has a date on it.

18 Dec 2026The registration deadline A Friday. Section 6 of Resolution 11204 sets it as the last day to petition COMELEC for registration as a party-list intending to contest the 2028 elections, within regular working hours. There is no second window.
1 yearHow long the organisation must already have existed At the time of filing — which is why this project looks for organisations that already exist rather than proposing to found any. Nominees are a separate and much lighter test: 90 days' membership before election day, not a year (Res. 11204 §48(E)). The one-year rule is §7(C)(iii); the deadline is §6.
41 of 183New groups accredited for 2025 COMELEC accredited 41 and rejected 142. In 2022 it accredited 70. Founding a new vehicle is now the hardest route available, which is precisely why a surviving registration is worth more than it looks.

What each of the three seatless sectors is actually being asked for

Health — 1.66× the line across three groups. The votes are already there and they are already cast. Consolidation alone takes the seat; nobody has to be persuaded to turn out who did not turn out in 2025.

OFW — 1.24×, and at most about 1,100 votes short with a single vehicle. The thinnest margin on this page by a wide distance. A seafarers' union or a migrants' family federation with a real domestic membership closes that on its own.

Persons with disabilities — 0.87×, with the sector already consolidated into one group. Consolidation cannot fix this one; there is nothing left to merge. But it is not an organising problem from a standing start either. P3PWD polled 391,174 in 2022 and 214,605 in 2025 — it lost 45.1% of its vote in one cycle, and 170,205 of that loss is in Metro Manila, Calabarzon and Central Luzon alone. The 33,000-vote gap is one vote in five of what those three regions shed. The blank-ballot pool in the same three was 3,309,178, so none of it has to be taken off anyone.

The regions are a different question. Only 7 of 18 had a vehicle drawing 40% or more of its vote from home in 2025. Anchored vehicles drew a median 78% from home, so the home-region ask is about 192,753 votes rather than the full 247,754 — and Bicol Saro and Ako Ilocano Ako both won on under 10% of their home region. Read that count with the share of the region beside it: the rule asks how much of a group’s own vote comes from home, not how much of the region it holds, and Calabarzon’s vehicle holds 2.0% of the largest region in the country — the other ten hold between 5.8% and 45.1%.

A cancelled registration is not the end of the conversation. Abante Mindanao was delisted by Resolution 10696 in February 2021, sat out 2022, re-registered, and won a seat in 2025 with more than 320,000 votes. For a group whose registration has lapsed the ask is re-registration, not resurrection, and one group that did exactly that is sitting in the 20th Congress.

One honest caveat about all of it

Every 2025 figure on this page that is not a published COMELEC total is a floor, and every shortfall computed from one is a maximum. That is the safe direction to be wrong in for this purpose — the opportunity is at least this large — but it means no number here should be quoted to the last vote in a room. Say "about 1,100", not "1,145".

Coverage: 2016 to 2025

Where the data stands

CycleSeat lineWinnersSourceStatus
2016240,72346 of 115Official national canvass; regional shares from municipal returns (GMA feed)Complete
2019195,83751 of 134Official national canvass; regional shares from municipal returns (ABS-CBN feed)Complete
2022236,22656 of 177COMELEC API — all 1,659 municipal canvass boards walkedComplete
2025247,75457 of 155COMELEC national canvass; precinct file validated against itComplete

All four elections now carry national totals, per-group seat counts and regional vote shares. Two limits are worth stating plainly rather than burying.

Sub-national undervote exists for 2022 and 2025 only. COMELEC never published it below the national level for 2016 or 2019, and the two results sites that would have carried it have been decommissioned and were never archived. That gap is not on the web, but it is not shut either. COMELEC’s Election Records and Statistics Division holds provincial non-vote figures for both years — PCIJ worked from them in 2019 — and they are obtainable by request. They will come back incomplete: on PCIJ’s account the 2016 release omitted nine provinces and five Metro Manila cities, and the 2019 release three provinces. The request belongs in the COMELEC enquiry, which is frozen for now.

Sulu and Lanao del Sur are thin in 2016 and 2019. Both were subject to failures of election and disrupted canvassing in those years, and the broadcaster feeds that survive from them report correspondingly low. Sulu's party-list vote nearly doubled between 2019 and 2022. Groups based there — Kusug Tausug most obviously — are understated by roughly a tenth in the two earlier years.

Sources. Official national results and per-group seat counts for all four elections from the COMELEC canvass as tabulated for each year; each year's table re-sums exactly to its published valid-vote total and seat count. 2022 undervote and overvote figures from a walk of all 1,659 of COMELEC's own municipal canvass boards; 2025 from COMELEC's national canvass file. Municipality-level returns for 2016 and 2019 from the OpenHalalan project (ODbL), whose 2022 party-list total reproduces the independent COMELEC walk to the vote. Sector classification seeded from Rappler's 2019 survey. 2025 figures also computed from 2025 Philippine Midterm Elections Data (figshare, CC BY 4.0, doi 10.6084/m9.figshare.29086472), file partylist25-final_updated.csv — precinct-level returns with registered voters, actual voters, overvotes, undervotes and per-group tallies. 2022 concentration shares: Michael Bueza, "20 winning party-list groups in 2022 got majority of votes from bailiwick regions," Rappler, 2 June 2022. National totals and seat lines: CPBRD Policy Brief 2026-6, "From Sectors to Seats," Tables 1 and 3 and Figure 1, citing COMELEC results and data analysis by Prof. Panao.

Nothing on this page is modelled or estimated: every figure is either a published COMELEC total or derived from precinct- or municipality-level returns, with 2025 non-winner figures stated as floors. Where data is missing, the year is shown as empty rather than filled in.