[3] Senator Benigno Aquino III of the Liberal Party, who ran on an anti-corruption platform, won the 2010 election with 42.08% of the votes defeating Joseph Estrada, a former president who was deposed in 2001 after scandals of massive corruption, and several others.

[7] As of 2014, the tribunal had still not yet acted upon the preliminary motions of both parties and on Binay's counter-protest; the suit is expected to still not have been resolved by the time President Aquino's term expires.

[26] In May 2015, the Court of Appeals ordered the 242 bank accounts belonging to Binay to be frozen for six months, when it granted the petition of the Anti-Money Laundering Council and of the Ombudsman.

Binay's camp had alleged certain people from the Liberal Party to be behind the freeze order,[27] a charge President Aquino, in a Bombo Radyo interview, himself denied.

[47] An article from The Manila Times reported also that the administration's bet, Mar Roxas, led the list of the biggest ad spenders in the country with 774 million peso in television advertisement expenses from January to December, in a survey also conducted by AC Nielsen.

[49] But only trimmed down to five, due to the declaration by the commission en banc of Dante Valencia as a nuisance candidate and the withdrawal of certificates of candidacies of Romel Mendoza and Roy Señeres.

[50][51][52] This is the final and certified list of candidates for the elections to be included in the ballots:[53][54] Jejomar Binay,[55] Miriam Defensor Santiago,[56] Rodrigo Duterte,[57][58] Grace Poe,[59] and Mar Roxas.

[70] On June 12, Independence Day, speech in Iloilo, President Aquino said that he could only offer Binay the conduct of a clean and honest election, but not an outright endorsement.

[71] On June 22, Binay resigned from the Aquino cabinet, both as presidential adviser on Overseas Filipino Workers' concerns and as chairman of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, but did not say why.

[72] Two days later, Binay addressed the public from his Coconut Palace office, branding the current administration as "manhid at palpak" (insensitive and bumbling), but did not mention Aquino by name.

[76] In a press conference on July 2, 2014, Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago (People's Reform Party) revealed that she was suffering from stage 4 lung cancer and she might run as president for the third time if it goes into remission.

[77] Called "the Iron Lady of Asia" and a recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, she was the widely expected winner of the 1992 election, but lost after an inexplicably unscheduled power outage during the counting of votes.

Early in 2015, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte made hints to the media of his intent to run for the presidency come 2016, with a widely praised promise of abolishing Congress altogether in favor of a Parliament should he win.

[96] Mixed reactions erupted in social media hours after the declaration and several supporters still continued to petition online, urging the mayor to revert his decision.

[97] On September 26, 2015, a large number of supporters gathered at the Quirino Grandstand in Rizal Park, Manila to urge Duterte to officially run for the presidency in 2016.

[103] On October 13, 2015, in a press conference held at a local hotel in Davao City, Duterte finalized his decision not to run for the presidency, with daughter Sara's objection being pointed out as one of the main contributors.

[112] On November 21, in a gathering held in his alma mater San Beda College, Duterte formally announced his presidential bid and also finally accepted Alan Peter Cayetano's offer to be his running mate.

[117] The day after, Duterte filed his certificate of candidacy at the commission main office in Manila and withdrew his bid for Mayor of Davao City (for which he was substituted by his daughter, Sara).

Poe said that they "discussed his intention to choose a candidate who, first and foremost, has the trust of the nation, and, secondly, has the potential to win in the election, in order to sustain the reforms especially against corruption and the pro-poor programs of the government."

Poe also observed that the attacks from UNA only began after she signed the Senate Blue Ribbon subcommittee report recommending plunder and graft cases against Binay.

[129] On December 1, the commission's second division had formally disqualified Poe from running as president in the 2016 elections and cancelled her filed Certificate of Candidacy for not failing to meet with citizenship and residency requirements.

[150] In a general assembly of MAGDALO coalition members, Trillanes announced that he will run for vice president as an Independent, but will support the presidential bid of Senator Grace Poe.

Former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas promises the continuation of the "Daang Matuwid" ("straight path") anti-corruption drive by the last president, which is appealing among the elites.

Senator Grace Poe's campaign is seen to be an alternative to Roxas and Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte; her image as untarnished by corruption is liked by the elite, while she sends messages that are pro-poor.

Duterte carried the majority of Mindanao, the so-called "Mega Manila" (except Makati where Binay won) and the Cebuano-speaking provinces in the Visayas, except Negros Oriental.

[190] On April 2, 2018, the manual recount of votes cast in Camarines Sur, Iloilo, and Negros Oriental, the results of the election which were contested by former senator Bongbong Marcos, started.

The Robredo camp said that these may have been damaged from previous floods and typhoons, and that the tribunal can go over to the ballot images, and reprint the audit logs from the records of the commission, while Marcos' lawyers said that it was recently doused over.

[194] Caguioa along with Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio were the only dissenters in a new resolution by the court ordering the parties to comment on the results of a recount of votes from Camarines Sur, Iloilo, and Negros Oriental.

[195] SC Associate Justice Benjamin Caguioa questioned the PET why it has not dismissed former senator Bongbong Marcos's election protest against Vice President Leni Robredo despite its "clear and unmistakable lack of basis.

[206] De La Salle University political science professor Julio Teehankee described it as the middle class' emergence of a "counter-elite challenging the old elite," with Duterte voters being seen as "who are taxed the most and financing Daang Matuwid.