Labour leads by 39,000 votes as PN tumbles

Support for the Labour Party climbs three points in May, while the Nationalist Party registers a decline of almost six points, a MaltaToday survey shows. 

The PL scores 44.8%, its highest result since September. The PN obtains 30% while ADPD registers 0.5%. 

For the PN it’s back to square one with a result similar to that obtained in October when the first survey with Bernard Grech as leader was held. 

The gap between the major parties now stands at almost 15 points, the highest since September. 

39k vote gap 

When one takes into consideration how people say they voted in the last general election and how they intend to vote now, the gap between the parties stands at just over 39,000 votes. Last month, this gap stood at just under 26,000 votes. 

This assumes that people who are uncertain how they will vote now, will cast their ballot for the same party they voted for in the last general election. 

In the 2017 election, the PL trumped the PN by 35,280 votes. 

PN loses voters 

The figures show that 6.5% of those who voted PN in the last general election now say they will vote PL, while only 1.7% of Labour voters will shift their vote. 

This suggests that the PN continues to lose support, a situation the party would not like to be in months away from a general election. 

However, the PL is hampered by a section of voters (10.4%), who supported it in the last election but now say they will not vote. PN non-voters stand at 4.5%. 

The situation flips among those who are unsure how they will vote – a cohort that is more prone to be convinced to switch allegiance. Over here, the PN has 16.7% of its 2017 voters who are uncertain, while the PL has 5.8% of its voters who are unsure. 

Young support PL 

The PL leads among men and women, across all age groups and across all regions. 

The party in government continues to be a stronger attraction to young voters, obtaining 44.5% against the PN’s 16.7% in the 16-35 age group. 

The PL’s strongest result is among pensioners where it notches up 48%. The 65+ age group also represents the PN’s best result at 36.3%. 

The narrowest gap between the parties is in the 36-50 age group, where the PL leads with just under five points. 

On a regional basis, the PL emerges ahead everywhere but with very slender leads in Gozo (ahead by 0.5 points) and in the Northern Harbour region (+1.4). 

Gozo represents the PN’s best performance with 40.7%, followed by the Northern Harbour with 38.4%. The PN’s worst results are in the Southern Harbour (21.5%) and the Western region (21.9%). 

The PL’s best results are in the Southern Harbour (54.8%) and the South-East (50.8%). Its worst result is in the Western region with 37.8% and the Northern Harbour with 39.8%. 

The regional data has to be interpreted with caution since these subgroups have higher margins of error than the overall results. 

Methodology

The survey was carried out between Monday 3 May 2021 and Friday 7 May 2021. 649 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.