Eleuteria Cabaluna, 74, is sitting in her home, a makeshift shelter built on the median strip between two lanes of fast-moving traffic.

San Andres is one of the poorest parts of Manila. Last night it rained. She pulled down an election poster and draped it over her home for extra shelter.

Election time is good for the poor. Not only are there the posters to patch leaky roofs, but candidates throwing sweets to children and giving out free T-shirts and hats.

Election rallies are like free concerts, with sentimental pop songs rewritten to extol the virtues of the candidates. And, rumour has it, the poor can be paid up to 1000 pesos ($27) for their vote.

Eleuteria is proudly wearing a wristband she was given with the President's name on it.

"From the moment I saw President Duterte I knew he was a good man," she says.

While Eleuteria has not registered to vote, she proudly wears a Duterte bracelet. ( ABC News: Dave Tacon )

She thinks he is a strong and caring president. She doesn't like the way drug suspects are gunned down in the street. She has seen corpses. Nevertheless, she supports him "100 per cent".

Eleuteria is one of the estimated 30 per cent of Filipinos who lack basic necessities. She moved to Manila from the regional city of Tacloban after being widowed to live near her daughter, who has a slightly better home a block away. Eleuteria depends on her, and the kindness of strangers, for food.

A carnival of democracy

On Monday, this country of more than 100 million people goes to the polls in the mid-term elections. Given the high illiteracy rates, most will pick the candidates by numbers, and shade in a circle next to their chosen candidate with a special marker before feeding the ballot into an automatic counting machine.

At rallies, candidates try to impress their number on voters' minds by making up puns and rhyming couplets using the digits.

San Andres is one of the poorest and most populated districts of Manila. ( ABC News: Dave Tacon )

President Rodrigo Duterte, half way through his six-year term, is not facing the people himself, but the elections are the first test of his continuing popularity.

The key battleground is the Senate, where Duterte has not had the numbers, which has been the main check on presidential power. The Opposition coalition has fielded a so-called "straight eight" of candidates — but the polls suggest none are guaranteed a seat, even incumbent Benigno "Bam" Aquino, the high-profile scion of a political dynasty that includes two former presidents.

The result will be closely watched.

The Philippines is important in the power-play for the South China Sea — and Duterte is welcoming Chinese investment.

President Duterte with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Manila. ( Pool Photo via AP: Mark R Cristino )

But in the streets of the Philippines, all politics is local. Since he was elected President in 2016, Duterte has overseen a bloody "war on drugs", during which almost 30,000 people have been gunned down in police operations and vigilante attacks.

The body count grows nightly in the slums as police conduct "tokhang" operations. The word translates to "knock and plead", meaning to approach addicts to give themselves up, but it has become a euphemism for police shootings.

Duterte pulled the country out of the International Criminal Court after it began investigations into the war on drugs. He has also lowered income taxes on the poor but imposed wide-ranging consumption taxes.

'Duterte is my idol'

In the slightly less desperate suburb of Santa Ana, it's impossible to find anyone with a bad word to say about the President.

Most of the locals live on or just above the poverty line, the next rung down on the ladder always visible.

"I plan to vote for all the party of Duterte", says taxi driver Lilia Ibarna. ( ABC News: Dave Tacon )

Lilia Ibarna, 57, has raised three daughters on her income from motorcycle taxi driving of around $82 a week. She plans to vote for candidates backed by the president, saying "Duterte is my idol".

"Before, people in this area were frightened to go out. Not now," she says. It is a common refrain.

Nearby, Madeline Mabong, 37, sells fried food from a small cart. She earns enough to keep her four children in school, helped by her house-painter husband.

She, too, will be voting for Duterte's candidates, citing his "clearing out the drug addicts" and his advocacy for the 10 per cent of the Filipino population who work overseas, sending money home — one of the country's largest sources of GDP.

"Because of him, there are big changes for the better," Madeline says.

Madeline Mabong, a Duterte supporter, says her vote is not for sale as she wants to set a good example. ( ABC News: Dave Tacon )

Staring down Duterte's barrel

There is a more mixed picture in the fast-growing city of Angeles, a centre of the sex tourism and call centre industries.

Trans woman Pia Villena, 53, was thrown into jail last year on drug charges. She spent months in a tiny, crowded cell before being released on probation.

The walls of the three-metre-squared room that is her home — devoid of running water or sanitation — are hung with pictures. There's her adopted son, Lester, graduating from primary school and herself in better days — lustrous hair and clear skin — when she worked in a beauty salon.

Today, she is missing most teeth and ekes out a living from cutting hair and doing pedicures for her neighbours. She claims she's had nothing to do with drugs — the charges came because she supported the losing side in the local barangay elections.

The police plundered her home when they arrested her and left Lester, then 14, on the street. He hung around outside the jail weeping until picked up by friends.

Does she fear tokhung — being killed by police?

"I have no fear because I have surrendered myself to God," she says.

Her worry is for Lester, who would be devastated to lose her.

Pia Villena lives in the slum Santos Extension. She hopes her chosen candidate will protect her from police. ( ABC News: Dave Tacon )

This election, she is working for one of the mayoral candidates, paid to get her neighbours to the polls and report back on how people are voting.

Does this include buying votes? She says it doesn't.

The mayoral candidate has promised he will protect her from the police. "I just hold on to those promises," she says.

Duterte's new brand of politics is frightening to Pia. She will vote for Opposition candidates because they represent "old politics" — the former Aquino regime — which she feels she understands.

A few dusty, littered roads away in the Balibago slum, schoolteacher Marilou Moquia lives alongside the town's sex workers and their children — many of whom have foreign fathers.

There have been three shootings of alleged drug addicts in the last few months, one opposite her house. People are frightened to go out at night in case of police operations.

Marilou will also vote for the "Straight Eight" of opposition senate candidates.

"I don't like the way the President has said God is stupid. The Bible says that blasphemy is the unforgivable sin."

Duterte is tough, and she approves of his tax policies, but drug addicts should be given another chance, she says.

Primary-school teacher Marilou Moquia outside her home in the Hadrian's Extension slum. ( ABC News: Dave Tacon )

Shooting addicts 'good for the country'

At the barangay council, (the lowest level of local government) in Santa Ana, Manila, councillor Rey Chavez proudly displays two certificates declaring the area "drug cleared".

There were originally 62 local addicts and pushers on the authorities' list. Two entered rehab and are now clean. As for the other 60, Chavez first says they have been killed, then says they have simply moved away. In any case, they no longer appear on the barangay lists.

"This organisation supports the president," he says, and will tell the local people how they should vote. Chavez describes himself as a "pure" Catholic who believes in the 10 commandments. But shooting addicts and pushers is "good for the country" because left to themselves, they would kill many more, he says.

"These people, pushers or criminals, I think they have to be dead to clean the Philippines", says local councillor Rey Chavez. ( ABC News: Dave Tacon )

Aris Hapatinga, 40, runs the vet clinic opposite the local police station. Shortly after Duterte was elected, the police began to round up the drug addicts. The street outside his clinic was packed with them, and soon the basketball courts down the road.

"I had no idea it was so bad," he says.

Aris's church leader will soon send a letter instructing the congregation how to vote. In 2016, they supported Duterte, and he expects that support to continue.

Aris has no problem with voting as instructed. Inflation is running high, but Duterte has increased minimum wages. He's mildly concerned the President is annoying other countries. But that has little impact on people's daily lives.

As for the allegations Duterte has unexplained wealth, Aris no longer trusts the mainstream media, sourcing most of his news from Facebook.

"Every time the mainstream media try to say something against our President, there are others who disprove their allegations."

Veterinarian Aris Hapatinga is a member of the Evangelical Church of Christ, which tells its followers how to vote. ( ABC News: Dave Tacon )

Aris says some of his staff will return to the provinces on Monday because they have heard they can get more money for their votes there.

In previous elections, vote sellers would photograph their ballot paper with their phones before collecting their cash. This year, mobile phones will be banned from polling booths. Nobody is sure how vote buying will work, but no-one expects it to stop.

Turn-out is normally high — around 70 per cent — although many of the poorest do not officially exist, often having no birth certificates or ID which means they can't vote.

There are rumours some people are being paid not to vote or intimidated to stay away from the polls.

Fake news abounds

In the poorer areas of Manila, historical fictions are believed as fact.

Locals say dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who was deposed in a wave of people power after he plundered his country, was the best president and the victim of an "elite" conspiracy. His rival Ninoy Aquino, who the history books say was assassinated by Marcos forces, was in fact murdered by his own family, some locals say.

One factor is the organised campaigns of disinformation spread through Facebook, in a country with more mobile phones than people.

"We have dedicated teams working on upcoming elections around the world, including the Philippines, to help prevent interference on our platform," Facebook said in a statement.

A few weeks ago, Facebook took down more than 200 pages, groups and accounts for "coordinated inauthentic behaviour" and took the unusual step of linking it to a businessman who had managed Duterte's online campaign in 2016.

Senator Risa Hontiveros is the leader of opposition party Akbayan in the Philippines senate. ( ABC News: Dave Tacon )

Senator Risa Hontiveros, leader of the opposition party Akbayan, says this is "too little too late" to avoid polluting this election.

She suggests the enthusiasm expressed for Duterte stems from coercion by local government chiefs loyal to the President. But on the streets, there is no sign of intimidation. People are eager to proclaim their support for Duterte, both in public and private.

How to topple a leader

Philippine politics is a matter of personalities, patronage and political dynasties. There are multiple parties, but they have virtually no grassroots membership. Alliances are essential to power, but they are often unstable. Politicians can run for more than one party at a time, and often switch parties to a victorious side after an election.

Part of Duterte's appeal is that as a mayor of the southern city of Davao, he seemed to come from outside the circle of dynasties and wealth. His crudity is seen by some as "refreshing".

President Rodrigo Duterte is viewed as a strong, straight-talking leader. ( Reuters: Erik De Castro )

But Hontiveros says proven corruption would turn the tide. Popular leaders in the Philippines can lose support quickly, as with the people's revolution that overturned Marcos, and the smaller push that saw President Joseph Estrada impeached for corruption in 2001.

But the lessons don't seem to stick. Estrada has been Mayor of Manila since 2013 and is recontesting the post this election. He is likely to be unseated by Isko Moreno, who started life as a rubbish picker before being talent-spotted and becoming a movie star. It's the kind of rags-to-riches story that touches Filipino hearts.

Candidate posters are plastered across Manila, like this street in Santa Ana, a lower-middle-class inner suburb. ( ABC News: Dave Tacon )

When violence brings safety

Back on the Onyx Street median strip, a truck blares an election jingle as it drives by Eleuteria's home.

"If you are a bad man, Ali Atienza is your foe."

It's a reference to the corruption in Philippines politics, but also to the war on drugs. In the promise of violence, there is also the promise of safety. Or that's the way it's understood on the street.

Eleuteria nods her head to the beat. After Monday, it will all be over, but she'll still have the vinyl posters that cover every surface. They come in handy for all sorts of things.