MaltaToday Survey | PN suffers most as voters switch off

Voter apathy has increased with both major political parties getting punished to varying extents in MaltaToday’s October survey.

Support for the governing Labour Party stands at 39.4%, a decline of 2.6 points since the last survey in July. Meanwhile, support for the Nationalist Party stands at 19.9%, a decrease of 5.9 points.

The decline in support for both parties comes as voter apathy increases. The survey shows that the percentage of people who say they will not vote increased by 8.1 points to 22.6% since July.

Support for ADPD increased by 1.2 points and now stands at 3.2%.

A breakdown of results shows the PL beating the PN across all age groups and all regions bar Gozo, where the Opposition enjoys the upper hand.

The PL fares better among men with 40.8% as opposed to 37.6% among women. On the other hand, the PN fares better among women with 22% versus 18.2% among men.

ADPD pips PN among young

Young voters (16-35) are the most apathetic with 33.7% saying they will not vote, a 10-point increase since July. Within this cohort, the PL scores 28.3%, while the PN registers a dismal 7.3%.

However, ADPD captures a significant 8.3% of those aged between 16 and 35, putting its support, for the first time, above that of the main Opposition party. This is ADPD’s best performance across all age groups.

These results have to be interpreted with caution since the margin of error in such subgroups is always higher than that for the overall result. But the results do give an indication of where the pulse is beating and are also a reflection of the general election, where voter apathy shot up and the performance of third parties was collectively the best ever in many years.

The major parties’ best performances are both among pensioners, who are also the least apathetic.

Among those aged 65 and over, the PL scores 47.9%, the PN 31.1% and ADPD 1.5%, while 11.6% say they will not vote.

PN with higher abstention rate

A breakdown of results by political allegiance as determined in the last general election shows that the PL retains 82.8% of its voters, while the PN retains 58.6%.

Of those who voted Labour in the March election, 7.8% now say they will not vote, which is almost double the result obtained in the July survey.

The PN has a much bigger abstention rate with 21.1% of those who voted Nationalist in the election now saying they will not vote. This represents an increase of 14.6 points over the July survey.

Only 0.3% of PL 2022 voters and 0.9% of PN voters will switch allegiance if an election is held tomorrow.

Of those who did not vote in the election, 4.2% will now vote for ADPD and 3.3% for the PL. No responses were registered for the PN within this cohort. The vast majority, 92.5%, of 2022 non-voters will either not vote or are unsure what to do.

Gozo is bluish, Malta is reddish

On a geographical basis, the PL beats the PN in all regions of Malta but loses Gozo. The PL’s best performances are in the South-Eastern and Southern Harbour regions, which are also where the PN performs worst.

The PN’s best performance is in Gozo, where it obtains 34.2% and emerges ahead of the PL that scores 29.8%.

ADPD’s best performance is in the Western region, where it scores 6.2%, followed by results that surpass the 4% mark in the Northern Harbour and South-Eastern regions.

Almost a third of voters in Gozo and the Northern region say they will not vote if an election is held tomorrow.

Methodology

The survey was carried out between Tuesday 13 September 2022 and Friday 30 September 2022. 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 4.2% for a confidence interval of 95% for the overall results. Demographic and sub-group breakdowns have significantly larger margins of error.