Election History Bites | Winning by a whisker

The 1927 election saw the closest voting result ever with the Nationalist Party (PN) beating Gerald Strickland’s Constitutional Party (CP) by a mere 31 votes. The PN took 41.6% of the vote and the CP obtained 41.5%. 

However, the CP still emerged as the largest party in the legislative assembly with 15 seats against the PN’s 13 seats. The CP was thus offered the chance to form a government, which it did with the support of William Savona’s Malta Labour Party. 

The next closest election victory in terms of votes was in 1951 when Dom Mintoff’s Labour Party, which obtained 35.7%, beat George Borg Olivier’s Nationalist Party (35.5%) by 262 votes. Nonetheless, the PN obtained 15 seats against the PL’s 14 and went on to form a coalition government with the Malta Workers Party led by former Labour Party leader Paul Boffa. 

The next closest result happened 57 years later, in 2008, when the PN obtained 49.3% of the vote against the Malta Labour Party’s 48.8%. This translated into a 1,580-vote gap between the two leading parties. The PN went on to form the government and enjoyed a one-seat majority in parliament. 

Election History Bites powered by Agenda Bookshop is a series of election-inspired stories that will be published from Monday to Friday every morning throughout the election campaign