MaltaToday Survey | Abela’s trust rating unchanged, Grech edges up

Robert Abela’s trust rating at 48.9% remains relatively unchanged in MaltaToday’s November survey, while Bernard Grech experiences a two-point increase with a rating of 28%. 

The survey held in the aftermath of the budget shows that the trust gap between the leaders now stands at 21 points, a decrease of two points since last month. 

Abela’s decline by an insignificant 0.3 points still leaves him well ahead of the Nationalist Party leader across all age groups and all regions bar one. 

The Prime Minister’s trust rating among young voters aged between 16 and 35 runs at 40.7%, a 26-point advantage over Grech. The PN leader scores a lowly 14.9% among young voters. 

These voters are also the most sceptical with 39.3% saying they trust none of the two leaders. 

Abela registers his highest trust rating among voters aged between 51 and 65, at 58.6% and 50.1% among pensioners. 

Grech’s best performance is among pensioners with a rating of 42%. 

On a geographical basis, the Labour Party leader enjoys a trust rating of 51.7% in Gozo, compared to Grech’s 33.2%. 

Abela’s trust rating soars in the South-Eastern and Southern Harbour regions with 65.8% and 57.9% respectively. 

These two regions represent Grech’s worst performance. In the South-Eastern region, the Opposition leader scores a dismal 9.7%, while in the Southern Harbour he scores 24.5%. 

In the Northern region, Abela edges out Grech with 36.3% versus 32%. The gap widens to 20 points in the Northern Harbour region, where Abela scores 49.3% against Grech’s 29.1%. 

The only geographic area where the PN leader leads the Prime Minister is the Western region where Grech scores 40.1% against Abela’s 33.4%. 

Among people who voted for the PL in the 2017 general election, Abela enjoys a trust rating of 90.4%. None of those who voted PL, trust Grech, and 8.7% trust none of the two leaders. 

Among people who voted for the PN in the last election, Grech enjoys a trust rating of 67.9%, while 6.1% trust the Prime Minister. Among PN voters, 23.3% trust none of the two leaders. 

Methodology 

The survey was carried out between Thursday 28 October 2021 and Wednesday 3 November 2021. 852 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 4.1% for a confidence interval of 95% for the overall results. Demographic and sub-group breakdowns have significantly larger margins of error.