MaltaToday Survey | Labour is ahead by 26,000 votes, but PN has best result since 2017

The Labour Party has reversed a downward trend in the polls with the April MaltaToday Survey putting its support at 41.8%. 

Support for the Nationalist Party stands at 35.6%, its best result since 2017. 

Support for both parties increased over last month with the PN enjoying a slight edge over its rival. The PN’s support increased by three points, while the PL’s support went up by 2.6 points. 

The results show that the PL has reversed the constant decline it has experienced since November, which climaxed last month when it went below the 40% mark. The PN has registered its best result since the last general election, shaving the gap with its rival to 6.2 points. 

The results suggest that voters are becoming more polarised with non-voters dropping significantly to 8.1% from 13.3% a month earlier. 

26,000 vote gap 

Taking into account the actual performance of the political parties in the last general election as a starting point and using the survey results on how people voted back then and how they will vote now, shows the PL ahead with just under 26,000 votes. In the 2017 general election, the PL surpassed the PN by 35,280 votes. 

This assumes that those who are unsure now, will vote according to their previous election choice and new voters since 2017 would be split evenly. 

Young vote PL, north goes PN 

The PL trumps the PN across all age groups apart from the 36-50 cohort, which is similar to the trust rating profile of the two party leaders. 

Among voters aged 16-35 the PL scores 36.8%, while the PN enjoys the support of 20.9%. The results show that Robert Abela is significantly more popular than his own party among young voters, while the reverse is true for the PN. 

Among pensioners, the PL enjoys the support of 50.7%, while the PN has the support of 44%. 

Among those aged between 36 and 50, the PN edges out Labour with 38.3% versus 36.2%. 

On a geographical basis, the PL triumphs in Gozo, the two southern regions and the Western Region. The PN trumps its rival in the Northern region and the Northern Harbour. 

The PL’s strongest performance is in the South-Eastern Region with 54.4% and its weakest in the Northern Region with 27.2%. The PN’s best performance is in the Northern Region with 52.1% and its worst in the Southern Harbour with 24.7%. 

Voter retention rates see the PL holding on to 79.1% of those who supported it in the 2017 general election, while the PN holds on to 79.8% of its voters. 

The PL loses 4.7% of its own 2017 voters to its rival, while the PN loses 4.2% of those who voted for it to Labour. This means that there is a net movement of almost 3,000 voters in favour of the PN. 

Methodology 

The survey was carried out between Monday 5 April 2021 and Friday 9 April 2021. 647 respondents opted to complete the survey. Stratified random sampling based on region, age and gender was used to replicate the Maltese demographic. The estimated margin of error is 4.9% for a confidence interval of 95% for the overall results. Demographic and sub-group breakdowns have significantly larger margins of error.