MANILA — There was no tension on the faces of the police officers guarding City Hall in Pasig City on Monday evening. The mood outside was festive: Working-class Filipinos in sandals, basketball shorts and tank tops were sharing snacks and joking as they watched on a large screen the returns for the national election held earlier that day. Nearby, several police officers sat in the white, plastic monobloc chairs endemic to Filipino bureaucracy, taking it easy.

The bloodshed that so often attends political changeovers in the Philippines was happening in other provinces. Somewhere else, gunmen had shot candidates and voters. Somewhere else, a grenade had been thrown at a market. Somewhere else, soldiers had been killed.

But in Pasig, a mixed-income city within Metro Manila with more than a half-million residents, a sense of celebration surrounded City Hall. The keepers of tin-roofed shops smiled; the drivers of motorcycle taxis called out to each other. It already seemed clear that the bellicose Rodrigo Duterte, whom the residents of Pasig favored, would become the Philippines’ next president.

Most candidates’ campaign posters bore their names or smiling faces, but Mr. Duterte had festooned the entire country with images of fists, his signature symbol. The fist appeared on walls, cars, motorcycles, T-shirts and bare wrists. Depending on your point of view, the fist seemed to promise companionable knuckle bumps, secrets clutched in the palm or the threat of bruises.