MaltaToday Survey | Labour averts Caruana Galizia public inquiry fallout

9.9% of those who are unsure who to vote for if an election is held tomorrow are slightly more inclined towards the PN

The Labour Party’s lead over the Nationalist Party remains relatively unchanged at almost 13 points, the MaltaToday September survey shows.

Support for both major parties has slipped since the last survey in July, with the PL losing 1.1 points and the PN 1.3 points.

The PL scores 43.9% against the PN’s 31.1%. Support for ADPD remains unchanged at 1.2%.

There has been an increase of four points to 12.4% in those who say they will not vote.

Nonetheless, the survey suggests that the PL has managed to avert a fallout from the Daphne Caruana Galizia public inquiry findings with the PN seemingly unable to capitalise on the situation.

While Robert Abela remains significantly more popular than his party, Grech’s trust rating trails behind the PN’s support level. This gives the PL an edge over its rival since it makes it more likely for the party to attract support on the strength of its leader’s trustworthiness when the election campaign proper starts.

When analysing how people voted in the 2017 general election and using the survey data to extrapolate current support, the numbers show the PL ahead with 33,400 votes. This represents a decline of almost 6,000 votes since July.

The apparent incongruence between this analysis and the raw survey result may signal that the 9.9% of those who are unsure who to vote for if an election is held tomorrow are slightly more inclined towards the PN.

In the last general election, the PL enjoyed a lead of 35,280 votes over the PN.

PN shortens gaps in regions where it trails

The PL leads across all age groups except pensioners, where it trails the PN by almost three points.

Among young voters the PL scores 30.4% against the PN’s 28.6%, a two-point gap which is significantly lower than the trust gap between the party leaders (Abela leads Grech by 14 points).

On a geographical basis, strength for the political parties mimics the same patterns as those of the trust ratings for the leaders, although the PN manages to shorten the gaps in those regions where it trails and has wider margins in those where it is ahead.

The PL leads in Gozo, the Northern Harbour region, the South-East and the Southern Harbour. The PN is ahead in the Northern and Western regions.

The PL retains 81.2% of those who voted for it in the 2017 general election, while the PN’s retention rate stands at 79.5%.

For the first time since April there are more PL voters inclined to switch allegiance to the PN than vice versa. The survey shows that while 2.2% of PL 2017 voters say they will now vote PN, 1.2% of Nationalist voters will shift to Labour.

Methodology

The survey was carried out between Wednesday 25 August 2021 and Thursday 2 September 2021. 651 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.