Delia behind Muscat by 25%, survey shows

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat is ahead of Opposition leader Adrian Delia by 25 percentage points, a survey published today has shown.

The survey on trust in political leaders, commissioned by It-Torca and carried out by statistician Vincent Marmara, indicated that 47.2% of respondents trusted Muscat the most, while 22.9% gave their backing to Delia.

This contrasts with a MaltaToday trust barometer published earlier this month, which had shown that 41% of respondents trusted the Prime Minister more, a drop of 9.4 points over the previous December barometer. The Opposition leader meanwhile had bounced up by 8.2 points, with 15.4% saying they trusted him the most.

The It-Torca survey found that all Labour Party voters trusted Muscat the most, but when it came to Nationalist Party voters, while 72.5% said they trusted Delia, 2.6% said they trusted Muscat, 10.3% refused to respond, 13.7% were undecided and 0.9% said ‘others’.

MaltaToday’s trust barometer had indicated that amongst PL voters, 72.3% trusted Muscat, a significant drop from the 98% trust retention in the previous survey. Twenty percent of Labourites were uncertain of who to trust, only 2.5% trusted Delia, and 4.9% trusted none of the two leaders.

Amongst PN voters, 33.8% trusted Delia, 8% trusted Muscat, a significant 33.5% did not know who to trust and 24.8% trusted neither.

Voting intentions

It-Torca’s survey found that 46.6% of respondents would vote Labour, while 28.9% would give their vote to the Nationalists. Those undecided stood at 4.2%, 12.3% refused to reply, 6.5% said they would not be voting and 1.5% would vote for other parties.

Using the Multiple Imputation Technique to scientifically deduce who those who the non-responders and undecided respondents would vote for, the end prediction indicates that 58.4% would vote PL if a general election were held now, with 40% voting PN and 1.6% would vote for Alternattiva Demokratika or other parties.

The last MaltaToday survey had indicated that 42% would vote PL, 28.9% PN and 1.2% AD. Those who had said they would not vote stood at 10.3%, while 17.4% were uncertain of their voting intention.