Analysis: Changing landscapes or winning by default?

The geographic shifts

From pale blue to pale red
Saint Paul’s Bay (PN falls from 55% to 43%)
Safi (PN falls from 51% to 47%)

From Deep Blue to pale red
Qala (PN falls from 61% to 49%)

From Deep blue to pale blue
St Julians (PN falls from 62% to 51%)

By unseating PN majorities in St Paul's Bay, Safi and Qala which had never previously switched their PN majorities and penetrating deeply in Nationalist heartlands like Saint Julians, the Labour Party has made unprecedented  demographic inroads.

Labour has also retained and strengthened it majority in two councils it had won for the first time in the previous round; Gzira and Xaghra even if it saw its' meagre first count majority in Mosta dwindle from 427 to 14.

But the question is; has Labour won by default as it often does a local level or is there something more this time round?

For sure Labour's historic victory in Saint Paul's Bay coincided with an abysmal turnout of just 35% (compared to 68% in 2008) which suggests that the absent Nationalist voter played a big role in Labour's victory. 

The same can be said of Qala where turnout fell from 77% to 67%.

In Safi the result suggests that some voters could have switched sides.

In fact turn out in this locality dropped by just a percentage point.

All in all comparisons are all the more difficult because many localities like Saint Paul's Bay had their previous round on Election Day in 2008 and thus had a very high turnout on that day.  This is why both parties lost votes; Labour losing 800 while the PN losing over 10,000.

The best comparisons can be made with those localities like Safi (where Labour increased its vote). But even in this case one has to account for labour factors.  For example Labour losses in Mosta can be accounted to local factors.

The ultimate result which sees Labour increasing its vote from 50 to 55% and Nationalist vote drop to 42% suggests two things: that it is true that Labour has won largely by default but that the Nationalist Party has lost the power to mobilise its supporters even in heartlands like Saint Julians. 

While switching to the Labour Party in local elections might not be so tempting considering that these elections are mostly contested by low profile candidates, the temptation could be greater in a presidential contest pitting the Nationalist Party against Muscat's Labour, which now encompasses a coalition spreading across the political spectrum and is presenting a number of candidates which appeal to pale blue taste buds.

But the high abstention rate itself can be providential for the Nationalist Party.

The PN now has access to full list of voters who did not vote in this election, and one expects it to make full use of it to address this disgruntlement. Had these voted Labour or AD, the PN would have had no means to reach out to this anonymous mass which now has a name and address.

Despite its startling defeat, the PN still showed that it still has fighting power. In Sliema the PN did lose 7% from its 2009 vote, but despite all the scandals rocking the dysfunctional council, the party is practically back to the same level of support it enjoyed in 2006. Neither did Labour make any significant inroads in this locality. In Mosta where the party mobilised its machine, the PN did manage to cut deep in Labour's 2008 lead.

For Alternattiva Demokratika the election was a mixed blessing. 

Surely the party failed in accomplishing Michael Briguglio's modest target of electing three councillors. But it managed to defend its seat in Attard and recover its leaders' lost seat on Sliema. 

But the party has also saw its vote in Swieqi fall from 10% to 5%, a demoralising blow in one of the party's few strongholds which consistently elected 3 green councillors in previous elections.

On the other hand Michael Briguglio's 8% (up from 5% in 2009) in Sliema and Ralph Cassar 7% in Attard (down from 9% in 2007) suggest that the greens are here to stay after their future was seriously in doubt after the party's abysmal performance in local and European elections in 2009. Added to this was another near miss in Munxar where the party still gained a staggering 8%. But the party failed to make any inroads in all the other localities contested where results ranged from less than 1% in Qormi to a more respectable 4% in Saint Julians.

Briguglio result is even more significant due to the high abstention rate in the locality and the presence of a candidate backed by the Sliema Residents Association which campaigned practically on the same platform as AD-which suggests that in this locality the AD vote was something more than protest vote.

In the last instance the result is a big moral booster for the Labour Party and another failure for the PN's leadership which failed in the task of mobilising voters even in its key strongholds.  This will inevitably raise more questions on whether Lawrence Gonzi still has an ability to win elections.