PN Candidate Sounds Warning: ‘We’re Playing A Broken Record And Not Attracting New Voters’
Today’s two political surveys were portrayed as a triumph by the Nationalist Party – more people intend to vote for PN than they did last month and its leader Bernard Grech has never been more popular.
However, PN candidate Roselyn Borg Knight has urged her party to look beyond any immediate poll gains and realise that it is barely managing to attract anyone who hadn’t voted for it in 2017.
“The numbers are shouting out loud,” she said. “PN is not attracting the new voters and those who left the Party along the years.”
“The issue here does not stop with Bernard Grech, in fact he is slowly gaining more of the peoples’ trust. Evidently the PN is playing a broken record, its music does not resonate with the young and those who deserted will not return when they see that the reasons they left for are still there.”
“Partit Nazzjonalista – Present New Policies with Relevant Faces. #PAGNAGDIDA.”
Borg Knight’s post was shared by political pundit Robert Musumeci, who praised her for having the “courage” to speak out.
“I’ll add that [former PN leader] Adrian Delia wasn’t the problem. To be fair, Bernard Grech isn’t the problem either. The lack of policies isn’t the problem either.”
“The issue is that the majority of Maltese people, including the new voters, relate more to Labour’s post-2008 mentality, no matter what the opinion makers may say.”
“The PN, or to be precise, those who control what goes on inside the PN, can never give people this recipe because their priorities are different and built on a single subject.”
“Delia had realised what the problem was, and look what happened to him.”
Surveys published by MaltaToday and It-Torċa today indicate that PL is on course for another massive victory at the next general election, with MaltaToday predicting a margin on around 26,000 votes and It-Torċa forecasting a gap of 32,000.
MaltaToday’s survey shows that national support for the PN currently stands at 35.6%, which is its best result since 2017, but still six points behind the PL which gained ground over the past month and now stands at 41.8%.
Meanwhile, the trust rating gap between Abela (47.2%) and Grech (35.8% has increased significantly to 11 points, due to increased trust in the Prime Minister over the past month.
Worryingly for PN, it is polling extremely poorly among 16-35-year-olds, with only 20.9% of people in this cohort planning to vote for them, compared with 36.7% who plan to vote for PL.
It-Torċa’s survey shows an even greater gap of ten points between the two parties, with 54.2% of respondents stating they plan to vote for PL and 44.2% stating they plan to vote for PN.
This indicates that the governing party has lost 0.8% of its support since the 2017 election while the opposition party has gained 0.5%.
The newspaper’s survey, which was carried out by leading statistician Vincent Marmara, also indicates an even greater trust gap of 12 points between the two leaders, with Abela scoring 49.5% and Grech 37.6%.
Both surveys indicate that the vast majority of voters intend to stick with the party they had voted for in 2017. MaltaToday’s survey shows that PN has won 4.7% of the 2017 PL voters, while PL has won 4.2% of PN voters, a very slight swing towards the PN.
However, It-Torċa’s survey shows that only 0.9% of PL voters intend to swing to PN, while 0.8% of PN voters will swing to PL.
What must the PN do if it wants to start winning general elections again?
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