MaltaToday Survey | Women and pensioners in Malta mostly worried by war in Ukraine

A MaltaToday survey has found that  48.3% of the population are highly worried about the war in Ukraine

Ukrainian refugees forced to leave their country after the invasion of Russian military forces
Ukrainian refugees forced to leave their country after the invasion of Russian military forces

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ranks high as a concern for almost half the population with women and pensioners being the most worried, a MaltaToday survey found.

The findings show that 48.3% of the population are highly worried by the war, while 40.2% are moderately worried. But the survey also shows that 11.6% are not bothered by the war.

The survey asked respondents to indicate on a scale from one to 10 how worried they are by the war in Ukraine. Rankings between eight and 10 were considered as highly worried, while rankings between one and three were considered to be not worried. The rankings between four and seven were considered moderately worried.

Women are significantly more worried than men by the war. The survey shows that 55.4% of women are highly worried as opposed to 41% of men. A majority of 42.5% of men are moderately worried.

The numbers also show that the level of concern increases by age with a significant majority of those aged over 50 being highly concerned by the war.

Among those aged between 51 and 65, 54.3% are highly concerned, but the increase is exponential among pensioners with 73% exhibiting a high level of concern.

On the flip side, only a quarter of those aged between 16 and 35 are highly worried by the war, with the vast majority exhibiting moderate concern.

Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February with the war being an overbearing issue in the run-up to the 26 March general election and its aftermath. The war has had an impact on global inflation, impacting the prices of food, energy and fertilisers among other commodities.

Analysing the data by political allegiance shows that Nationalist voters are likelier to be worried by the war than Labour voters.

62.8% of those who voted for the PN in the March election are highly worried by the war, while 48.5% of PL voters exhibit similar high concerns.

On a regional basis, it is in the Northern Harbour and Western regions that absolute majorities are highly worried by the war.

Methodology

The survey was carried out between Monday 16 May 2022 and Wednesday 25 May 2022. 656 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 4.3% for a confidence interval of 95% for the overall results. Demographic and sub-group breakdowns have significantly larger margins of error.