[ANALYSIS] Labour landslide or wipeout? The PN’s prospects

When the future looks bleaker than a disastrous past, then things really start looking bad for a political party. And the PN is facing such a moment, with surveys raising the prospect of Labour further widening the gap in the forthcoming election. 

Last Sunday’s MaltaToday survey shows that while 10% of PN voters in the 2017 general election now trust Robert Abela more than Bernard Grech, ‘only’ 3.2% of these voters say they will be voting PL. This means that if Labour manages to translate trust in Abela into votes, it will be winning by an even larger majority than the 45,000-50,000 vote gap predicted in current surveys based on voting intentions.  

Surely reluctant Nationalists – those who say they will not vote and/or that they have no trust in either leader – may well flock back to the party during the campaign, possibly reducing the gap to 2013 and 2017 proportions. To some extent this is already happening: 16% of current PN voters trust neither leader but will still vote PN.  

But will PN voters eventually regroup to avoid a catastrophic defeat, or will things get worse for PN in a presidential campaign where trust in leaders is key to the outcome? 

The problem for the PN is that it is simply not winning over any substantial amount of voters from the other side to make up for any losses amongst its 2017 voting base. Neither does the survey suggest that any Labour voters are in transit towards the PN. While a substantial 7% of 2017 Labour voters say they would not vote, only 1.2% say that they trust Grech more than Abela.  

Compared to January, the percentage of PL voters in 2017 who trust Grech more than Abela has fallen from 11.2% to just 1.2%. In contrast, the percentage of 2017 PN voters who prefer Abela to Grech has increased from 6.4% to a staggering 10.4%. 

And while the percentage of PN voters who intend voting Labour has only increased from 2% in January to 3.2% now, the percentage of PL voters intending to vote PN has fallen from 6% to just 1.5%. This suggests that Labour’s lead is already bigger than it was in 2017 but the situation could become catastrophic for the PN if all those who voted Nationalist in 2017 but who now trust Abela more than Grech end up voting Labour.  

The PN’s nightmare before Christmas 

A careful reading of last Sunday’s survey is the stuff of nightmares for PN strategists. 

The survey suggests that as things stand now, the best prospect for the PN is losing by a slightly larger margin than in 2017. This would still be bad for the PN considering that it starts with a 35,000 vote deficit. Anything short of a reduced gap would be a negative result for the party. 

But the PN now faces the prospect of an unprecedented wipeout. Such an outcome may well spell the end of the PN, as we know it, possibly exacerbating existing factional and ideological splits to the point of no return. This would probably mean that Labour would entrench itself in power, possibly for the next decade. 

Much now depends whether ‘reluctant’ PN voters who distrust both political leaders, will put a peg on their noses and still vote PN. 

It also depends on whether those 2017 PN voters who now trust Abela are already in transit towards Labour. 

Another possibility is that some of these voters will abstain or vote for smaller parties or independents, who so far fail to leave a mark, but which may gain traction as the election approaches. For one of the greatest obstacles for any late PN recovery is the creeping perception that the election is already a lost cause, and therefore abstaining or voting for another party will have no bearing on the outcome.  

In this survey less than 1% say they will be voting AD but a large number of tertiary educated and young voters are either undecided or intent on not voting. 

United Labour vs. fragmented PN 

The survey suggests that currently the PN’s voting base is split in four categories: those who will vote PN and trust Grech (two-thirds of its 2017 voters), those who will vote PN despite trusting neither Grech or Abela (16% of its current voters), those intent on abstaining (7.4% of its 2017 voters) and those who are have crossed the Rubicon and are intent on voting Labour (3.2% of its 2017 voters) or who are in transit towards Labour (10% of its 2017 voters who trust Abela more than Grech). It also includes a small category, which trusts Abela more than Grech but which will still vote PN (3% of current PN voters). 

In contrast the PL’s voting block remains rock-solid. While none of the present PL voters prefer Grech to Abela only 1% of its 2017 prefer Grech while 1.5% would vote PN. This suggests that the chance of the PN making inroads in the PL are minimal. The only problem for Labour is that 7% of its 2017 voters would abstain. Significantly an equal percentage of 2017 Labour voters distrust both Abela and Grech. This suggests that had the PN been in better shape Labour would be in serious trouble. But as things stand disillusioned Labour voters are balanced out by a similar percentage of PN voters intent on abstaining. 

Abela’s new political centre  

Labour not only manages to hold its own fort losing, practically nothing to the other side, but Robert Abela himself still manages to attract a category of former Nationalist voters. 

In this way he has managed to replicate Muscat’s successful electoral model, which largely retains the ever-loyal traditional Labour vote, while making strategic inroads among different categories of former PN voters, from educated social liberals to rednecks, hunters and building contractors. 

This reflects the party’s repositioning on the political spectrum, which largely turned Labour in to a less conservative and more socially sensitive version of the PN of the 1990s. 

Abela’s party is now anchored in a new political centre, where social liberalism is tempered by nationalist and hawkish stances on migration. Unprecedented levels of corruption failed to dent Labour’s ability to appeal to former PN voters, some of which may have been immunised by the less blatant but equally corrosive ways of past PN governments, which were also close to the big business interests, which they supported. 

Still, even on corruption Abela has room for manouvre. For any action against corruption in the Muscat era is bound to further strengthen Labour’s appeal, as had already been the case in 2020 in polls showing a surge for Abela after he fired the former police commissioner and kicked Konrad Mizzi out of the party.  

The reluctant PN voter 

A segment of ‘reluctant’ PN voters are already putting a peg on their noses. 

A staggering 16% of current PN voters trust neither of the two leaders, the highest in the past year. While this is an indication that the party is still holding the fort, it does not bode well for enthusiasm among current voters whose mobilization will be crucial to galvanize the party during next year’s election campaign. In contrast Abela’s strong rating of 98% among current Labour voters and 90% of its 2017 voters suggests a higher level of enthusiasm among party supporters on the eve of the campaign. 

So, what is leading to the constant erosion of PN support? One factor could be internal factional splits and bad blood following an acrimonious leadership contest just two years before a general election. But the survey suggests that under Bernard Grech, the PN still fails to inspire those very categories in which Adrian Delia was even less popular than Grech.  

One particular segment crucial for any PN recovery are tertiary-educated voters, including those hailing from working class backgrounds whose support was crucial in securing EU membership for Malta. The survey indicates that this category contains a large number of reluctant Nationalist voters. 

Significantly in this category, while the PN enjoys a 6-point lead over Labour, Abela still leads Grech by 8 points. This is mainly because while 24% of tertiary educated voters declare that they trust neither party leader, ‘only’ 15% will not be voting.  

Therefore, a big chunk of tertiary-educated voters who distrust both leaders will still vote PN in a general election. The low trust in both political leaders among this category could also reflect a cultural aversion to ‘demigod’ leaders and distrust in the entire political system in a category, which is angriest at Labour’s track record on good governance and the environment. 

This is why the PN needs to recover these disillusioned and finicky voters to avoid a massacre in the polls. 

Volatile young vote 

Young voters are another category where the PN is stronger than its leader. 

Here the PN is 10 points more popular than Grech who is trusted by just 23% of these voters. In contrast, Abela is 12 points more popular than his party in a category where Labour is surprisingly trailing the PN by 2 points. This represented an improvement for the PN compared to November. As things stand, the volatility of young voters remains one of the most unpredictable factors in the forthcoming election. 

But while the PN’s score in this bracket, suggests that a chunk of young PN voters who distrust both party leaders would still vote PN, Abela’s higher score suggests that a larger chunk of younger voters may be in transit towards Labour. The gap between Abela and his own party suggests that Labour has more room for future growth even in this category. 

What the survey shows is that younger voters are the only category where a large category is still undecided. 

This raises the question whether the PN is even trying to capitalise on possible dissatisfaction among younger voters who may be swayed by a less conservative and environmentally conscious PN. 

It may well be the case that in its fear of disappointing its more vociferous elderly voters, the party risks turning off the only large segment of the population, which is showing signs of movement. Yet in doing so the party is paralysed by unresolved identity questions dating back to the aftermath of the EU referendum, which have never been resolved.