1. The Six MEPs

Clearly, all six MEP candidates who secured their seats are significant winners in this election. In addition to receiving a substantial salary, they will now have the opportunity to exert their political influence on the European stage.

Young Gozitan newcomer Thomas Bajada from the Labour camp managed to snag Labour’s third chair in his first time contesting a national election, beating the likes of Joseph Muscat-endorsed candidate Clint Azzopardi Flores.

Another young PL candidate, Daniel Attard, also got elected after running an extremely strong campaign on the ground.

PN’s Peter Agius also deserves a special mention after being the candidate to secure the Opposition’s third seat after the party lost it in the 2019 election.

Candidates being re-elected include: Alex Agius Saliba, Roberta Metsola, and David Casa, with the latter being Malta’s longest-standing MEP after being elected to the European Parliament for a fifth term.

2. Roberta Metsola

I think we can all agree that Metsola was probably the biggest winner out of all of this.

Not only is she currently one of the biggest names in European, being the EP President, but she was re-elected to the European Parliament with the highest vote count in Malta’s EP history, at 87,473 first preference votes.

3. Alex Agius Saliba

Agius Saliba proved his status as Labour’s leading candidate by securing 63,899 votes, setting a new record for a PL candidate in the MEP elections.

This marks a significant improvement from his 2019 performance, where he garnered 18,808 votes in the first count.

4. The PN

Despite what appears on paper as a loss, this European election has offered a ray of hope for the PN.

The party’s journey over the past 11 years has been nothing short of tumultuous. However, for the first time in over a decade, the PN can finally see some light at the end of the tunnel, with the voting gap between the two major parties narrowing to just 8,400 votes, an all-time low since PL got elected to government in 2013.

PN leader Bernard Grech is also a winner in this election. The Opposition Leader would have faced the potential of calls for his resignation had the gap remained unwavering. However, this election showed a renewed sense of trust in the party and, by extension, the leader.

5. Arnold Cassola

Cassola delivered an outstanding performance, outperforming all other independent candidates in the election. This, along with a swing towards the PN, appears to have boosted the results for independent and third-party candidates compared to previous elections.

Cassola made it to the 34th count in Saturday’s MEP election, contributing to the election of Nationalist Party MEPs David Casa and Peter Agius. The former Alternattiva Demokratika leader secured a total of 22,941 votes, significantly more than his 2019 total of 2,858.

With 12,706 first-preference votes, the independent candidate was the third most popular individual candidate overall, trailing only behind PN’ Metsola and Labour’s Agius Saliba.

However, the situation shifted as votes from these leading candidates and eliminated contenders were redistributed.

Despite Cassola’s failure to get elected, he – alongside fellow independent Conrad Borg Manche – made significant waves across the political scene, prompting renewed public scrutiny of the Maltese political system.

THE LOSERS:

1. The PL

Despite the obvious fact that the Labour Party was re-confirmed as the most popular party, the gap between them and PN has narrowed significantly.

From a whopping 42,600 in the 2019 European elections, and a similar 39,400 vote majority in the 2022 general election, Labour claimed just 8,454 more than PN.

This election marked Labour’s narrowest victory in the European Parliament since 2004, when their margin was around 21,000 votes.

Labour garnered 117,805 votes, while the Nationalists secured 109,351.

The PL’s support fell below the 50% mark for the first time since the 2008 general election, which the PN narrowly won.

2. Robert Abela

Prime Minister and PL leader Robert Abela is facing serious questions about his own leadership after the party hit a voter gap low.

Although the Labour Party anticipated a reduction in the PN-PL gap, no one foresaw the significant loss of votes to this extent.

In a speech in front of the Labour HQ yesterday, Abela said the party will be replying to voters’ diminished majority “with humility”. He later said in an interview on ONE that he will take “tough decisions” that have been pending for a while and pledged to always do what is right.

3. Norman Lowell

Lowell, the leader of Imperium Europa, experienced a decrease of 1,569 first-count votes in this election compared to his 2019 tally.

In the current election, Lowell initially secured 6,669 first-count votes, with inherited votes raising the total to 8,577 by the time he was eliminated from the race. This marks a notable decline from the 2019 European Parliament election, where he garnered 8,238 first-count votes and 9,693 total votes.

Despite contesting every MEP election since Malta’s accession to the EU, this is the first instance where Lowell’s vote count has decreased. His vote count trajectory shows an increase from 1,603 votes in 2004 to 3,559 in 2009, 6,205 in 2014, peaking at 8,238 in 2019, before dropping to 6,669 in 2024.

4. ADPD

Despite being around for decades, third-party ADPD fared quite poorly, even being outperformed by some independent candidates.

Malta’s Green Party received around 3,505 votes in this year’s European Parliament elections. The party said it was not content with these expected results, saying that it should have attained “much more.”

Despite a relatively large protest vote, it clearly shows that people who are disillusioned with PLPN flocked to independent candidates – particularly former AD leader Arnold Cassola – rather than the green party.

Who do you think were this election’s biggest winners and losers?