2019 Philippine House of Representatives elections


The 2019 Philippine House of Representatives elections were the 35th lower house elections in the Philippines. They were held on May 13, 2019 to elect members to the House of Representatives.
Candidates were expected to be either for or against President Rodrigo Duterte. As the Philippines has a multi-party system, those who are for Duterte may find themselves running against each other. Other districts that may be seen as safe seats may see a candidate elected unopposed. Several seats have not been apportioned since 1907, gerrymandering on some newly-apportioned seats and entrenchment of political dynasties make competitive races in so-called swing seats rare. The Liberal Party is expected to lead the opposition against PDP-Laban.
The pro-Duterte parties overwhelmingly won most of the seats in the House. Pro-Duterte party-list ACT-CIS emerged as the topnotcher in the party-list election. There was infighting among the pro-Duterte parties on who should be elected Speaker. Alan Peter Cayetano agreed on term-sharing with Lord Allan Jay Velasco for the speakership, with the former serving for the first 15 months, while the latter serving for the last 21 months.

Electoral system

The Philippines uses parallel voting for its lower house elections. There are currently 297 seats in the House; 238 of these are district representatives, and 59 are party-list representatives. Philippine law mandates that there should be one party-list representative for every four district representatives. District representatives are elected under the plurality voting system from single-member districts. Party-list representatives are elected via the nationwide vote with a 2% "soft" election threshold, with a 3-seat cap. The party in the party-list election with the most votes usually wins three seats, the other parties with more than 2% of the vote two seats, and the parties with less than 2% of the vote winning a seat each if the 20% quota is not met.
Campaigning for elections from congressional districts seats are decidedly local; the candidates are most likely a part of an election slate that includes candidates for other positions in the locality, and slates may comprise different parties. The political parties contesting the election make no attempt to create a national campaign.
Party-list campaigning, on the other hand, is done on a national scale. Parties usually attempt to appeal to a specific demographic. Polling is usually conducted for the party-list election, while pollsters may release polls on specific district races. In district elections, pollsters do not attempt to make forecasts on how many votes a party would achieve, nor the number of seats a party would win; they do attempt to do that in party-list elections, though.

Participating parties

Contesting district elections

The seats held by each party were expected to change by the time candidacies were declared in late 2018.

Contesting via the party-list system

The parties under the Makabayan bloc was formerly supportive of Duterte's policies until Duterte suspended peace talks with the Communist Party of the Philippines. Akbayan is seen as opposed to Duterte's policies. Other parties are generally supportive of Duterte's policies.

District changes

the number of seats is done 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.
In total, seven new district seats were created. Two were in Isabela, where the entire province was redistricted from four districts to six, and one each in Cavite, where the sixth and seventh districts were redistricted into three, Aklan and Southern Leyte, which were split into two districts, Laguna, where Calamba was separated from the second district and South Cotabato, where General Santos was separated from the first district.
As there are now 245 districts; therefore, there are 61 party-list seats, an increase from 59. The 18th Congress shall then have 306 representatives. However, as preparations were already on its way when the laws for the creation of General Santos and Southern Leyte districts were made, the commission decided to delay elections for the four seats involved to October 2019; the ballots for those districts showed their previous conflagrations as if it were not redistricted yet. A lawsuit was then decided by the Supreme Court prior to rescheduled elections, ordering the commission to declare the winner of the election in South Cotabato's 1st district. Upon doing so, the commission then declared the winner of the unified Southern Leyte district as well. The first elections for these two districts shall be on 2022, at the next general election. This left the number of districts to 243, with still 61 party-list seats.

Retiring and term-limited incumbents

Term limited

These representatives are term-limited, and are thus not allowed to run in 2019:
These representatives are not term limited, but will not run:
These congressmen left office before their terms expired, and were not replaced. As the 17th Congress has not called for special elections, these seats remain vacant until the sine die adjournment. For party-list representatives, the next person on the list would assume office. In both instances this happened, the next person on the list replaced the person who resigned.
These are the marginal seats that had a winning margin of 5% or less, in ascending order.

Held by PDP–Laban

Held by other parties

Results

Congressional district elections

Party-list election