ANALYSIS | MaltaToday Survey: As abstention drops, Labour bounces back

An analysis of MaltaToday surveys conducted between October 2023 and June 2025 reveals a consistent trend: Labour’s poll performance improves when abstention among its 2022 voters declines.

With negligible voter shifts between Labour and PN, changes in support have hinged almost entirely on mobilisation rather than conversion. Moreover, Labour’s recent gains seem to be coming from its own voters drifting back, not switching sides.

This points to a rebound in turnout rather than any real shift in party support. The latest survey only shows 3% of PL voters shifting to the PN and 1% of PN voters shifting to Labour. This small shift which is consistent with similar ones in previous surveys, is practically cancelled by a larger 6% shift of PN voters to third parties.

How abstention fluctuated

But while the small shift from the PL to the PN has remained constant over the past year and a half, the abstention rate among PL voters in 2022 has changed considerably.

In October 2023, abstention among Labour’s 2022 voter cohort was already considerably high at 29.3%, coinciding with a sharp drop in the party’s support to a historic low of 43.8%. By February 2024, abstention had increased further to 34.2%, while Labour’s support stood at 47.9%. This was followed by a marked recovery in March 2024, when abstention fell to 14.4%, and Labour’s support rebounded.

The trend held ahead of the 2024 MEP and local elections. In the final pre-election poll, abstention among its 2022 voters had risen again to 19%.  And while the final MT survey showed Labour leading with 50.8% of the vote, in the actual vote, the party underperformed: securing only 45.3% in the MEP elections while scoring 52.1% in the local council elections held on the same day.

Labour’s post-election recovery

Following the election setback, surveys in autumn 2024 still showed significant abstention within the Labour camp of over 20%.

But the trend started to reverse in the months after the 2025 budget, which included tax cuts aimed at the lower middle class.

In November 2024, when Labour and the PN were polling neck and neck, 25.7% of 2022 Labour voters still intended to abstain. But by April 2025, when Labour hit the 52%-mark, abstention among past Labour voters had already fallen to 11%. By June that figure had dropped sharply to just 6.7%. At the same time, Labour’s support surged to 53.3%, giving it a commanding 14-point lead over the PN.

Apart from reflecting the feel good factor generated by the budget, the turnaround also coincided with the signing of collective agreements benefiting public sector workers, and a broader effort by Prime Minister Robert Abela to re-engage Labour’s traditional base.

In doing so, Abela seems to have adopted different strategies aimed at different categories of disillusioned Labour voters, ranging from major and dramatic U-turns at the first signs of sustained opposition—as happened on Manoel Island—to efforts to fine-tune labour migration policies and possibly behind-the-scenes addressing of personal grievances. In short, Labour has learned the timely lesson not to take any of its voters for granted.

Abstention among PN voters

Meanwhile, abstention among PN voters, which had consistently been lower than among Labour voters in 2023 and 2024, is now higher. In April 2025, it peaked at 19%, and although it fell to 10.5% in June, it still remained above Labour’s 6.7%. The latest survey mirrors the situation in the 2022 general election which saw both parties losing ground to abstention, but the PN losing more than Labour.

This trend suggests that the post-budget decline in abstention has largely benefited Labour. Very few of these returning voters have shifted to the PN or third parties.

Conversely, any further growth in abstention in the PN camp risks becoming a major factor if disillusionment creeps in and more PN voters become even more apathetic.

Bernard Grech’s resignation and the impending leadership contest in the PN could break this cycle, reintroducing enthusiasm even if this comes at the risk of greater divisions.

Educational divide

The latest MaltaToday survey still shows around one-fifth of the overall electorate intending not to vote. But this is not significantly higher than the 17.3% of voters who did not vote or invalidated the vote in 2022.

However, this group is increasingly concentrated among the tertiary and post-secondary educated. While only 18.4% of secondary educated voters say they will not vote in a forthcoming election the percentage rises to over 25% among those with a higher education.

Among university graduates—the only educational segment where the PN leads—abstention remains high at 27%, and support for third parties is growing.

In this group, the PN leads Labour at 39% to 26%, but 7% would vote for third parties and over a quarter intend to abstain. This may include both former PN voters who distrust the current party leadership and former PL voters disgusted by corruption and Labour’s approach to rule of law issues. Similarly, among post-secondary voters where Labour leads by a significant margin, 25% still intend to abstain and 7% favour a third party—including 4% who would vote for the centrist Momentum party, whose principled stance on the environment and rule of law issues turns it into a stiff competitor for the PN.

While overall voter apathy remains significant, Labour’s ability to remobilise its base has proven crucial to its recovery. It reinforced a pattern that has now become a consistent feature of MaltaToday’s polling—the lower the abstention among Labour’s 2022 cohort, the greater its advantage over the PN.