MaltaToday Survey | PN leader’s bounce not enough as Abela maintains positive run

Robert Abela’s trust rating maintains its positive run and surpasses the 50% mark for the first time since last September, the MaltaToday survey released today shows.

The Prime Minister scores a trust rating of 50.4% in the June survey, an increase of 0.8 points over last month.

Bernard Grech’s trust rating stands at 29.3%, an improvement of almost four points over his worst performance last month. However, this is the Nationalist Party leader’s second month in a row where he scores less than 30%.

The gap between the leaders now stands at 21 points.

The survey is characterised by a decrease in those who trust none of the two leaders and those who are unsure. While 16.7% (-1.4 points) trust neither Abela nor Grech, 3.5% (-3.1) do not know who to trust.

Abela gets the better of Grech across all age groups, all regions and among men and women.

The Labour Party leader enjoys a trust rating of 46.3% among those aged between 16 and 35, which contrasts with Grech’s 24.2%, which is his lowest score across all age groups.

Abela’s strongest showing is among those aged 51 to 65, where he registers a rating of 57.9%

On a geographical basis, Abela’s strongest showings are in the South-East and Southern Harbour, traditional Labour strongholds, where he scores 60% and 66.6% respectively.

On the flipside, these are the regions in which Grech performs the worst.

In Gozo, the Prime Minister registers a trust rating of 48.2% as opposed to the Opposition leader’s 28.9%.

Grech’s best performance is in the Western region where he scores 38.5% but still trails Abela by more than four points.

The findings suggest that Abela’s waning fortunes at the start of the year may have been linked to the COVID-19 crisis that culminated in March when government had to introduce strict restrictive measures.

Abela’s demeanour since then, coupled with the two-pronged success in controlling the pandemic and inoculating people, appear to have left a positive mark on the Prime Minister’s trust ratings.

Grech appears to have recovered some of the lost ground from last month when he faced yet another internal feud between Jason Azzopardi and Adrian Delia but the numbers suggest the PN leader still struggles to achieve a significant breakthrough.