MaltaToday’s first survey of 2019 shows Adrian Delia has been seriously harmed

Joseph Muscat continues to enjoy unparalleled trust among voters with the latest MaltaToday survey giving him a record rating of 54.8%.

This is the Prime Minister’s highest ever trust rating, surpassing even the post-Budget November result.

Muscat starts the year 34 points ahead of Opposition leader Adrian Delia, who experienced a dip in his trust rating, and now stands at 20.4%.

1. Muscat enjoys the trust of an absolute majority of men, women and people of all ages. He is hugely popular among women, obtaining a trust rating of 60.3%, as opposed to 50.6% of men. The numbers show that Muscat continues to be the Labour Party’s biggest asset. Nothing thrown at the Prime Minister since the 2017 general election has managed to damage him. His consistently high trust rating suggests that any strategy by the Opposition to directly target him is bound to fail.

2. Muscat trumps Delia across all regions, with significant distance separating them in Gozo, the Southern Harbour region and the South East. In Gozo, a formerly PN hotbed, Muscat enjoys a trust rating of 68.4%. In the Southern Harbour and South Eastern regions – traditionally bastions of the PL – Muscat scores 67.1% and 58.8% respectively.

3. The Opposition leader appears unable to motivate voters. Only 14.1% of women and a quarter of men trust him, while his strongest trust rating by age group is among the elderly. Delia receives the trust of 27% of those aged 65 and over but plummets to just 11% among those aged 36 to 50.

4. Delia’s disastrous result in Gozo suggests that he is hugely disconnected from the Gozitan electorate. His personal troubles may not have helped him either in a more conservative island. But the PN leader also enjoys dismal trust ratings in the South Eastern and Southern

5. Labour starts EP election race 18 points ahead. The European Parliament election is less than four months away and the Labour Party starts the race 18 points ahead of its rival, a MaltaToday survey shows. Asked who they will vote for in the European Parliament election in May, 42% said PL and 24.4% indicated the Nationalist Party.

6. The smaller parties – the Democratic Party and Alternattiva Demokratika – have once again failed to register any progress. Support for the PD drops to 0.3% from 0.9% in December and likewise, AD experiences a reduction to 0.4% from 0.7%.

READ THE FULL REPORT ON MALTATODAY'S PRINT EDITION