Gap between PL and PN grows to 75,000 votes, only 38% of Maltese satisfied law is respected, surveys show

A survey carried out by It-Torca, published today, shows that 51.4% of respondents would vote for the Labour Party, while only 22.3% would vote for the Nationalist Party, if an election would take place tomorrow. Around 9% did not answer or had not made up their mind about who to vote, while 14% would not vote, and 3.2% would vote for other parties.

The survey also showed that the gap between the PL and PN had kept increasing, and now stands at 75,000 votes in the PL’s favour, It-Torca reported.

The survey, which was carried out by statistician Vincent Marmara, involved a sample group of 530 respondents, and used the stratified random sampling method.

The sample taken was precisely matched with people’s ages in Malta, their gender, the electoral districts, and how they voted in last June’s election.

Marmara explained that the gap between parties had grown to such a degree because around 11,000 voters who voted Nationalist in June would vote Labour is an election were to be held tomorrow, while only 2,000 would switch from Labour to Nationalist. Moreover, a large number of those who voted for the PN in June now said that they would not vote at all.

The survey further showed that 55.8% of respondents think that Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder was not politically motivated, while 23.8% think it was and 20.4% are undecided.  Moreover, 67.3% of respondents who voted for the PN in June think Adrian Delia should stay on a party leader, while 22.1% think he should be removed, and 10.6% are undecided.

(Credit: The Sunday Times of Malta / Graphics by Design Studio)

Another survey, published by The Sunday Times of Malta today, showed that only 38.4% of respondents were satisfied that the law in Malta is respected, with 56.9% not being satisfied and 5% not expressing an opinion.

Asked whether they were satisfied that everyone is treated equally by the government, 53.3% of respondents said they were satisfied, 40.6% said they were not, and 6% did not have an opinion.

In terms of the trust ratings of Opposition leader Adrian Delia and Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, on a scale of 1 to 10, respondents gave Delia a trust rating of 3.4 and Muscat one of 7.5. Delia’s low trust rating was consistent across all demographic segments, The Sunday Times of Malta reported.

The biggest problem the country is facing at the moment, for most respondents, was traffic (14.6%), followed by the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia (7.7%), corruption (6.7%), foreigners living in Malta (5.6%), the Opposition party/leader (4.9%), disagreement between politicians (3.3%),  partisanship/politics (2.8%), lack of justice/rule of law (2.7%), future outcome of the country (2.4%), lack of tranquility in the country (2.4%) and lack of transparency (2.2%).

In terms of great trust or a fair amount of trust in the country’s institutions, the Armed Forces and the government were the most trusted, with 72% of respondents each saying they trusted them. The police force was trusted by 69% and parliament by 56%. The least trusted were the law courts and the media, with 51% each.

The survey was conducted by MISCO International Limited at the start of last week, and sampled a group of 400 respondents and has a margin of error of ±5%. Respondents gave their answers on the phone, and were selected using a random-digit dialling method. Data was weight ed according to age, gender and region.

Both surveys are congruent with the findings published about a month ago by this paper. Back at the beginning of October prior to the budget and Daphne Caruana Galizia's murder this paper showed that if an election were to be held today PL would lead PN in excess of 70,000 votes. Moreover, the share of non-voters had also shown a significant increase with the lion share deriving from June 2017 PN voters. 

The survey published by the MediaToday team on October 8th had also shown that the primary concern for the Maltese electorate is traffic. This concern transcends political allegiance and socio-geo-economic characteristics.