Introducing the Philippine Electoral Violence (PEV) data set: Uncovering trends, targets, and perpetrators of election-related violence during the 2013–2019 elections

Abstract

Election-related violence (ERV) is a recurring concern in the Philippines—considered to be one of the most violent countries in Asia. National and midterm elections which happen every 3 years are the most violent. As such, a thorough analysis on the nature of ERVs in the country is necessary to address the causes facilitating electoral violence. While there have been several ERV studies in the Philippines after the post-1986 democratization period, this article is the first that looks at electoral violence data at both the individual and aggregate levels. This study examines incidences of ERV in the Philippines from 2013 to 2019 by creating a novel incident-level data set, the Philippine Electoral Violence data set, constructed from online media reports. A total of 394 incidents were found over the three election periods covered in the data set, which includes at least one incident in 65 out of the 81 provinces in the country.