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This audit covers 20 candidates for senator listed in Pulse Asia’s latest nationwide survey on the May 2019 Senatorial Elections that was conducted from December 14 to 21, 2018 using face-to-face interviews. These candidates are also among those most actively engaged in social media.

From January 2018 to January 2019, the combined ad spending of 18 candidates on TV, radio, print, and outdoor ads have reached PhP2.4 billion, by the rate card of media agencies monitored by Nielsen Media. Yet, just a few have net worth values bigger than their respective adspend.

UNDER ELECTION laws, they were not yet officially considered to be candidates, and therefore not yet incurring campaign expenditures, until after the official campaign period had started.