Voters stamp their feet as election turnout drops to historically low 85.5%

Voters ignored incessant appeals by Robert Abela and Bernard Grech to go out and vote as Malta’s election saw the turnout drop to 85.5%.

The final turnout figure communicated by the Electoral Commission is far below what any of the two parties were expecting, although MaltaToday’s rolling survey had been projecting a historically low turnout throughout the election campaign.

The turnout is 6.6 points lower than the 2017 election with almost 52,000 voters opting to stay at home.

A district by district analysis of the turnout shows that in the Labour leaning districts from 1 to 7, the average turnout stood at 87.2% (-6 points over 2017), while the average in the Nationalist leaning districts from 8 to 12 stood at 83.1% (-7.6 points).

Gozo, which is a distinct electoral district and shifted Labour in the last election, saw a turnout of 86.1%, a decline of 5.5 points.

The district with the lowest turnout was the 12th District where 78.4% of voters turned out to vote. This was followed by the 10th District, where 81.6% of voters cast their ballot.

In the 2nd District, where the turnout until 2pm on Saturday was dismally low, the final turnout by 10pm had risen to 87.1%.

The highest turnout was in the 7th District, where 88% of voters went out to vote, followed by the 3rd District, where 87.9% cast their ballot.