Labour bounce sees gap increase to just over 26,000 votes

The Labour Party is 26,424 votes ahead of the Nationalist Party after it widened its lead over the past 24 hours, MaltaToday’s rolling survey shows.

The accumulated results as at 8pm on Wednesday 16 March showed support for the PL running at 53.3%, a 0.4-point increase, and 44.7% for the PN, a decline of 0.4 points. Third parties collectively registered 2.1% of the vote. Numbers do not add up to 100% because of rounding.

The gap increased by 2,323 votes over the previous day. However, all changes remain well within the margin of error of 2.1% on a sample base of 2,210 respondents.

The changes marked the first decline for the PN in a week and reversed a two-day dip for the PL.

No change was recorded in the trust ratings of both leaders. Bernard Grech registered 30.4%, while Robert Abela scored 43.8%, the same as the previous two days.

MaltaToday’s survey continues to project a lower share of valid votes cast than the 2017 general election.

According to the survey, the share of valid votes stood at 86.7%, regaining 0.2 points over the previous data set from Tuesday.

The share of valid votes is the basis on which a general election is determined and in 2017 this stood at 90.9% of eligible voters.

Third parties retained a cohort of supporters of just over 6,000.

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.