Olongapo City mayoralty bet Vicente Magsaysay topped the online poll conducted by subictimes.com getting 71,269 or 59% of the total votes cast.

The online poll which was supposed to be closed on January 5 ended up closing earlier (January 02, 2010) after votes exceeded the 120,000 maximum number of votes allowed. The maximum vote cut-off was set to represent the potential voting population of the city.

Sta. Rita chairman Jerome Bacay dislodged Mayor James Gordon, Jr. from second place a few days before New Year and ended up with 42,729 or 36% of the votes. Gordon, meanwhile, 6002 or got 5% of the votes.

The online poll created a stir in many social networking site, including Facebook, Twitter and blogs after supporters took turns posting results.

“We are happy to see that there is so much interest in the poll, we did not expect that it will reach the maximum vote since the website is just four and a half months old. This only reflects the excitement that the current crop of candidates created with the voters,” Anthony Bayarong, editor of the subictimes.com said.

The online poll plugin was created by software programmer Jake Ruston.

Councilor Edwin Piano in a facebook comment, questioned the credibility of the poll.

“I saw Vic’s graph and the numbers are unbelievable. That poll could not be credible because it does not check for IP address nor ask for identity of voters (both are mandatory requirement for running a credible online poll.),’ Piano said.

Bayarong explained that “the website took criticism and low blows because of the poll and we expected that, we cannot please everybody, but the subictimes team is very happy with the turn out of voters.”

In a seperate poll at www.subicbaynews.blogspot.com, Magsaysay is also currently leading by 9 votes against Mayor Bong Gordon, 457-448 as of 10:09am January 05, 2009.

Another poll ran by also managed by Councilor Edwin Paino, http://olongapo-city-2010-election.blogspot.com, was closed after Magsaysay overtook the Gordon by 23 votes a week ago.

Most subictimes.com surfers chose to keep on voting pushing the total votes to the maximum allowed by the online polling program.

‘I want to vote on the poll. I voted three straight days and contributed three votes. That’s enough for me,’ Chariz emailed the subictimes.com.

Last December 31st, supporters of Jerome Bacay edge out Magsaysay by 10,000 votes but Magsaysay recovered the following day. Since then, Magsaysay never looked back, piling up the votes as Bacay’s votes also surged. Votes for Gordon also surged January 2 but lost steam breaching the 6,000 mark.

A day before the poll closed, Magsaysay, in his facebook account urged his online friends to keep voting.

“Paki sabi sa mga kaibigan na 1 vote per day ang pwede sa subictimes.com kaya vote ulit kayo bukas for me,” he posted.