[SURVEY] Labour ahead in Gozo by a whisker

For which party would Gozitans vote for if an election is held now:                                                  

PL                                                       25

PN                                                       23.6

AD                                                      1.3

Other                                                  0.3

Not Voting                                           12.9

Don’t Know                                         15.7

No Reply                                             21.3

Gozo, the thirteenth electoral district, remains in the balance as Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi enjoys more trust than Opposition leader Joseph Muscat among Gozitans, despite Labour's slight advantage.

This emerges from the results of a MaltaToday survey among 350 Gozitan respondents held in the first two weeks of July. 

The survey confirms that Joseph Muscat’s “personal” stance in favour of divorce has not dented support for the party in the conservative locality, which remains roughly the same as it was in elections for the European parliament in 2009. 

An extrapolation of the survey results shows Labour slightly improving on its result in the 2009 elections for the European parliament, in which the party registered a relative majority in Gozo for the first time in its history since 1955.

Compared to the 2008 general election, the PN has lost 8 percentage points, the Greens gain nearly two percentage points while Labour gains 7 points.

But the survey shows the PN losing less support in Gozo, than in the rest of Malta. While the latest survey shows the PN retaining 60% of its 2008 voters in Gozo a previous survey conducted in both Malta and Gozo showed the PN retaining only 47% of its 2008 voters. 

In Gozo the PN still loses 9% of its 2008 voters to Labour but this is less than the 12% it loses to Labour on a national level. On the other hand Labour retains less votes in Gozo than in entire country. While in Malta it retains 84% of its support, in Gozo it retains 82%.

Gozo also defies the national trend when it comes to trust in the leaders of the two major political parties. 

A survey conducted in both Malta and Gozo in June showed Opposition leader Joseph Muscat enjoying the trust of 41% of respondents compared to 24% who trust Gonzi more. But in Gozo, Gonzi enjoys a slight  2-percentage point advantage over Muscat.

Gozo’s strategic value

Labour has not won a majority in any general election in Gozo district since 1955. This adds significance of the survey result, which shows Labour with a chance of winning the district’s third seat.

Labour’s support in the general elections between 1971 and 2008 had always hovered between 40% and 46%. With the notable exception of 1987, Labour always ended up winning the general elections when it secured more than 45% of the Gozitan vote.

Following a fluke victory in Gozo in 1955, the party was nearly wiped out from the conservative island at the height of the Church-State dispute, gaining just 6.3% of the Gozitan vote in the 1962 election and 22% in the 1966 election.

But after the Maltese Church lifted its moral sanctions on Labour activists in 1969, the party managed to double its vote scoring 44.8% in 1971.

Support for the PL was to slip again by 5% in the following decade, with the party registering one of its worst ever Gozitan results in the 1981 election.

Surprisingly, led by incumbent Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici in 1987, the party scored its best ever general election result in with 46% of the vote in Gozo – a result which reflected the party’s power of incumbency as

But after being elected to power in 1987 it was the PN, which managed to increase its majority in Gozo by five percentage points from 1987 to 1992 thanks to an economic boom and the setting up of a Gozo Ministry led by  Anton Tabone.

But in the wake of a number of scandals which hit the PN in Gozo, Labour saw its share of the vote increase by 5% in the 1996 election. The premature fall of Alfred Sant’s government saw the party losing three points in Gozo against four points nationally.

The 2003 election saw Labour losing a further two points, dipping to 40.8% – its worst result in Gozo since 1992. This corresponded with a strong affirmation of the Yes vote in the EU referendum.

Nationalist fortunes started to decline again as unemployment started rearing its head again. But the 2008 election saw no remarkable shift to Labour. In this election Labour won 42.9% of the Gozitan vote – an increase of two percentage points over its 2003 tally but still not enough to give Labour an electoral victory.

Labour had actually recovered its 1998 level of support but its result was still 3% below the 46% gained in 1996.

The PL’s relative majority in the June 2009 MEP elections represented the party’s best result in Gozo since the 1955 general election.

But Labour’s success comes in the wake of a drop in turnout from 92% in the March 2008 general election, to just 77% in last June’s MEP elections.  This may well be an indication that a number of Nationalist Gozitan voters may well have abstained rather than switched party in these elections. 

Even the present survey shows that 13% of Nationalist voters in 2008 will not vote if an election is held now.  A further 19% are undecided.  If the PN manages to recover these voters it would still win the district despite the shift to Labour.