MOST of the Filipinos polled recently remain satisfied with the way democracy is working in the country, the latest Social Weather Stations survey said Thursday.

The Second Quarter 2017 Social Weather Survey, conducted among 1,200 respondents, says 80 percent of the Filipino adults polled were satisfied with the way democracy is working in the country, which is six points below the record-high 86 percent recorded in September 2016 and similar to the previous record of 80 percent in June 2013.

The June 2017 survey also says that 61 percent of those polled said “democracy is always preferable to any other kind of government.” That compares with the 19 percent who said “under some circumstances,an authoritarian government can be preferable to a democratic one.”

Another 20 percent said it doesn’t matter whether there is a democratic or a non-democratic regime in the country.

The question on “satisfaction in the way democracy works” originated in the Eurobarometer surveys and is also in standard use in Latin American and Asian Barometer projects.

The people’s preference between democracy and authoritarianism is a different issue from the degree of satisfaction with how democracy works, and is probed by a separate question.

The latest non-commissioned survey, conducted from June 23 to 26, had sampling error margins of ±3 percent for the national percentages.