Metsola Surges Ahead As Final Election Survey Sees PN Narrow Gap And Cassola In Top 6
The vote gap between the Nationalist and Labour parties ahead of Saturday’s MEP election currently stands at 24,262 or 9.4 percentage points, according to the last survey of the campaign, published this evening by MaltaToday.
According to the survey, the Labour Party is on course to win 50.7% of the vote compared with 41.4% for the PN and 7.9% for all other candidates.
Compared with the 2019 election, the result would see Labour reduce its vote share slightly from 54.29% to 50.7% while the PN’s tally would increase from 37.9% in 2019 to 41.4%. The vote expected for candidates not running on a Labour or PN ticket remains the same.
According to the survey, PN will narrow the gap with PL when compared to previous elections, which saw the latter win with over 35,000 votes.
That being said, this gap seems to have been created not by a significant shift from PL voters to PN, but rather by them abstaining.
As per the survey, the labour party will be losing 18.8% of its 2022 General Election voters, while PN will be losing 15.5%.
PL will seeming lose 2.8% of the 2022 voters to the PN, while the PN is losing 1.3% of these voters to the PL.
First Preference
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola is by far the preferred candidate, estimated to collect 41.3% of all first preference votes.
She is followed by Labour’s Alex Agius Saliba (29.9%) and Daniel Attard (4.2%).
The country’s fourth preference is currently a tie with Peter Agius and Arnold Cassola both coming in at 3.9%.
Second Preference
Despite the numbers displaying people’s preferred candidate, don’t let these figures fool you. Given that Malta has a single transferable voting system, the second preference counts almost as much as the first one.
Although PN candidate David Casa is low in the first preference ranks, the survey indicates that 39.7% of voters who will be giving Metsola their first choice, will be voting for him.
Peter Agius and David Agius are second and third in the ranks, respectively.
Interestingly enough, Independent candidate Arnold Cassola is fourth in the ranks. The survey indicates that 4.9% of voters who will give Metsola their first preference, will be voting for him.
In the labour camp, Daniel Attard seems to be taking the majority of Alex Agius Saliba’s second preference votes, leading by 26.5% of voters.
14.7% of voters who will give Agius Saliba their first preference vote will be voting for Clint Azzopardi Flores and 13,3% of said voters will be giving their second choice vote to Gozitan Thomas Bajada. Steve Ellul is fourth in the ranking.
Trust Rating
In addition to electing Malta’s representatives at the European Parliament, the elections are also viewed as a sort of midterm election, giving the electorate the chance to express their views about both the government and the Opposition.
Asked which leader they trust the most, 37.6% of respondents chose Labour leader Robert Abela with 25.3% opting for PN leader Bernard Grech, meaning both leaders are significantly less popular than their party. A whopping 37.1% said they preferred neither.
Age Range
The 16-35 age range displayed the least trust in both major party leaders, with a 52.3% of these voters saying they trust neither. Meanwhile, 31.9% of individuals in this age range have said they trust Robert Abela and 15.8% trust Bernard Grech.
This age demographic provided a stark contrast to the 65 and over age range, with just 18.4% saying they don’t trust either leaders, 47% displaying trust in Abela, and 34.7% trusting Grech.
What do you make of these results? Let us know in the comments
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