Voter abstention declines but remains higher than 2017 general election

Voter abstention has declined since the start of the electoral campaign but is still more pronounced than the 2017 general election, MaltaToday’s rolling survey suggests.

The share of valid votes stood at 86.1% on day seven of the rolling survey, a fractional improvement of 0.1 points on the previous day.

The share of valid votes has improved by two percentage points since the first survey was released on Sunday 27 February but it still remains short of the share of valid votes cast in the 2017 general election – 90.9%.

Valid votes cast is not the turnout, which stood at 92.1% in the last election, but the basis on which victory in an election is determined.
The accumulated results as at 8pm on Tuesday 8 March show the Labour Party at 53% and the PN at 44.8%. Third parties collectively registered 2.2%.

The gap between the two major parties now stands at 24,875 votes.

Robert Abela’s trust rating has improved fractionally to 43%, while Bernard Grech’s registers a fractional drop to 30.3%. The share of those who trust no one or are unsure stood at 26.7%.

All changes are well within the margin of error of 2.6% signalling no major shifts either way.

Third parties

Third parties together are on course to obtain around 2% of the national vote, which equates to almost 7,000 votes, the rolling survey has been suggesting.

The 26 March general election is being contested apart from the Labour and Nationalist parties, by the long-standing ADPD, and three new political parties – ABBA, Partit Popolari and Volt. Four independent candidates are also in the running, including Arnold Cassola.

ADPD, ABBA and PP are fielding candidates in all electoral districts, while Volt is only contesting in four.

Since the start of the electoral campaign the voting share of third parties has collectively oscillated between 2% and 2.6%.

What we do

A base survey with a sample size of 597 was released on Sunday 27 February. This survey was carried out between 21 and 26 February.

Polling will continue everyday between Monday and Friday. The daily tallies will boost the sample size in this rolling survey and enable us to re-calculate the data on progressively larger samples. Results from the last polling day on Friday will be published in the print edition on Sunday.

Care is taken to ensure that daily samples are as representative as they can be of the general population, reflecting gender, age, regional distribution and past voting patterns.

The results based on the accumulated tally comprising the previous day’s results are published at 8:30am on the MaltaToday home page.