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James Debono
This month’s MaltaToday survey shows the PN at its lowest ebb since October 2006. The Nationalists registered a substantial 9% increase in support from September to April, only to lose 5.5% in the past month.
The PN’s losses come in the wake of last month’s Labour victory in the local elections. Apart from the raging controversy on hunting and the penning of the Smart City agreement, April was an uneventful month during which Labour was remarkably quiet.
The PN’s losses were not matched by any Labour gains. On the contrary: over the past month the MLP registered a slight 1.5% drop in its support.
Rather than openly shifting to Labour, more respondents than usual have refused to declare their voting intentions. The number of those who would not reveal how they would vote is up 8% from last month. Former Nationalist voters were more reluctant to state their voting intentions than usual.
Of those who would not state their voting intentions for the next elections, 19% had voted for the PN in 2003. Only 6% claimed to have voted for the MLP.
In this month’s survey only 4.5% of those who had voted for the PN in 2003 would vote Labour in the next election – down from 8% in April and 12% in February.
But the decrease in the ranks of former PN voters who would now vote for Labour was compensated by an increase in former PN voters who would not declare their voting intentions for the next election.
The number of those who voted for the PN in 2003 but refused to state their voting intentions for the next election increased to 9% in May from 2.5% in April.
As usual, MLP voters showed more loyalty to their party than their Nationalist counterparts. While 61% of PN voters in 2003 would vote for the same party in the next election, 86% of MLP voters would do likewise in the next election.
Those who voted for the PN in 2003 were also more undecided (14%) than their Labour counterparts (8%).
A comparison with the last six MaltaToday surveys reveals that MLP vote has remained stable just under the 30% mark for the past three months. Support for the MLP surpassed the 28% mark in six out of seven surveys held since September and fluctuated between 23% and 33%.
Support for the PN surpassed the 28% mark in only three out of seven surveys and fluctuated between 21% and 29%.
Support for AD reached its lowest ebb in the May survey. In the past seven months support for the Greens fluctuated between 2% and 7%.
Methodological note
The survey was held between April 23 and April 25. A total of 467 respondents were randomly chosen from the telephone directory. 300 respondents accepted to be interviewed. The survey has a margin of error of +/- 5.7%. |
