Malta’s eccentric yet charismatic far-right leader, Norman Lowell, has registered in the polls for the very first time, beating out PN MP David Stellini and falling just behind MEP and former Minister Francis Zammit Dimech.

According to Malta Today’s latest survey, Lowell would receive 1.2% of first count votes, polling him ahead of the ever-present Cyrus Engerer, former AD Leader Arnold Cassola, former Orizzont Editor Josef Caruana, and popular environmentalist Camilla Appelgren.

The survey found that the bulk of his support is coming from younger males in the Northern Region, which includes areas like St Paul’s Bay and Mellieha.

Malta’s single transferrable voting system does mean that Lowell is still unlikely to get elected, with voters likely to give their knock-off votes to members of the same party.

However, this year, Lowell’s Imperium Europa may make significant gains over other third parties, who appear unable to attract disenfranchised voters key to smaller parties success.

The far-right have traditionally not performed well in Malta, with Lowell’s best performance coming in the last MEP election in 2014, where he received 6,761 votes.

With Dalli, Metsola, and Sant leading, who could win the rest of the MEP seats?

The Labour Party’s Miriam Dalli continues to lead in the polls by a significant margin showing at 11.8%, followed by former PL Leader Alfred Sant (8.8%), and the Nationalist Party’s Roberta Metsola (6.4%).

With the PL predicted to take four of the six MEP seats after the election on 25 May, this year’s race presents very different scenarios for Malta’s two main parties.

However, both races seem to be gathering steam. For Labour, Alex Agius Saliba is just ahead of Josianne Cutajar, standing at 1.7% and 1.3% respectively, while Cyrus Engerer polls a whole percentage point behind at 0.6%.

Meanwhile, the race for the what could be just the one remaining PN seat, Frank Psaila (2.9%), MEP David Casa (2%), Peter Agius (1.8%), and MEP Francis Zammit Dimech (1.4%) appear to be battling it out.

Psaila, a newcomer to the MEP elections but a popular figure on TV, has experienced a drop by 1.5% from the last survey seriously opening up the race.

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Julian Bonnici

Julian is the former editor of Lovin Malta and has a particular interest in politics, the environment, social issues, and human interest stories.