MaltaToday Survey | Labour strengthens pole position with vote gap of nearly 48,000

Support for the Labour Party stands at 45.7% as it continues its upward trajectory at the expense of the Nationalist Party that has slumped to 29.3%.

The June MaltaToday survey released today shows the PL’s support increase by 0.9 points and that of the PN drop by 0.8 points since last month.

The gap has now widened further to more than 16 points, which translates into a difference of almost 48,000 votes when analysing voter patterns in relation to the last general election.

The findings show that while the PL manages to retain 82.1% of those who voted for it in 2017, the PN’s retention rate stands at 70.1%. More significant is that 8.4% of PN voters in 2017 say they will vote PL if an election is held tomorrow, in contrast with 1.7% of PL voters who will switch allegiance.

The PN’s performance is its worst since September last year and the third month in a row that it has registered a decline. Of note is that the party’s fortunes in the June survey move in the opposite direction of the party leader’s trust rating that improved over the previous month.

Neck and neck in Western and Northern regions

The PL beats the PN across all age groups, among men and women, and in all regions. However, although the data for these subgroups does give an indication of trends it has to be interpreted with caution because margins of error tend to be much higher than the overall results.

Among young voters (16-35), the PL’s support runs at 34.3% as opposed to the PN’s 23.3%. These are the worst results for both parties but this is also the age group that has the highest numbers of people who are unsure (21.4%) and will not vote (16.7%).

The PL’s strongest result is among those aged between 51 and 65, where it scores 55.2%, while the PN’s best result is among those aged 65 and over where it registers 38%.

On a regional basis, the parties are neck and neck in the Northern Harbour and Western regions, albeit the PL enjoys a slender lead in both.

In the Northern Harbour region the PL obtains 35.9% against the PN’s 34.7%, while in the Western region, the gap is even narrower with the PL at 38% and the PN at 37.8%.

In Gozo, the PL continues to perform very well with support now standing at 58.8% as opposed to the PN’s 26.1%. Labour also flies high in the Southern Harbour, a traditional stronghold, with 61.1%.

The PN’s best performance is in the Western region, followed by the Northern region where it scores 36.4%. Its worst showing is in the Southern Harbour where support slumps to 16%.

Methodology

The survey was carried out between Monday 31 May 2021 and Friday 4 June 2021. 650 respondents opted to complete the survey. Stratified random sampling based on region, age and gender was used to replicate the Maltese demographic. The estimated margin of error is 4.9% for a confidence interval of 95% for the overall results. Demographic and sub-group breakdowns have significantly larger margins of error.