Busuttil scores better than Muscat amongst ‘undecided’

It has been a constant struggle throughout the election campaign to identify people’s voting intentions in the weekly iSurvey commissioned by The Malta Independent to Business Leaders.

Week after week, the number of people still ‘undecided’ on how to vote has continued to surge with each survey carried out.

The final iSurvey in this campaign gives a staggering 16.2% of ‘undecided’ voters combined with those who refused to divulge their intentions. This is one of the highest ever seen in the iSurveys, which have been conducted for this newspaper since 2014.

The reasons why people are still refusing to respond on who they intend to vote for next Saturday, 3 June, may vary from

Over the course of the monthlong electoral campaign, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has, overall, experienced an increase in his trust ratings, while changes in the trust score of Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil were slower to come by.

For the fourth and final edition of The Malta Independent’s election iSurvey, respondents were again asked which leader they trust the most. Overall, 52.7 per cent of respondents chose Dr Muscat, 35.2 per cent chose Dr Busuttil and 12.1 per cent chose neither.

It has been noted that when observing Dr Muscat, the trust gained in one week was easily lost in the following, and vice versa. This underscores the timetested maxim that a week in politics is a very long time, especially for our prime minister.

Dr Busuttil on the other hand, has found it difficult to register changes in his trust score. Week one to week two saw a 0.3 percentage point increase, to a onepoint drop in week three, and finally another drop of 2.6 percentage points in week four.

Prime Minister Muscat, on the other hand, saw an increase of 3.3 percentage points between weeks one and two, a drop of 2.5 percentage points in week three and finally a jump of 3.8 percentage points in week four.

While a skew has been repeatedly registered in favour of PL voters throughout the election surveys, the results certainly indicate that even among this category of people, people have made up their minds to a greater or lesser degree about Dr Busuttil, but the jury is still out with regards the prime minister. The skew is negligible and easily weighed against the 2013 actual results as regards the trust barometer; however, this is not the case when people were asked to state how they intend to vote in the 3 June election.

With one week to go until people visit the voting booths, how people will make up their mind about Dr Muscat is still a greater question mark than about Dr Busuttil.

The prime minister is the most trusted leader according to this edition of the iSurvey, but as has been illustrated by the trend of the survey, people are far more likely to change their views about the prime minister than they are about the Opposition leader.

Respondents were also asked, rather than to choose between the leaders, to rate each leader separately on a scale of one to 10, with 10 signifying the highest trust score.

Prime Minister Muscat also experienced an increase in his mean trust score, at 6.2 from 5.9 last week. Dr Busuttil registered a mean trust score of 4.7, down from 4.8 the week before.

Among those who voted PL in the 2013 general election, a mean score of 8.7 went to Prime Minister Muscat, and a mean score of 2.2 went to Dr Busuttil.

Among those who voted PN in the 2013 general election, a score of 7.6 went to their respective leader, while a score of 2.4 went to Dr Muscat.

2013 PL voters place more trust in their leader than their PN counterparts placed in Dr Busuttil. It has also been observed that 2013 PN voters place higher trust in Dr Muscat than PL voters place in Dr Busuttil.

Cross-referencing voter intentions for the upcoming elections, those who say they will be voting PN have given Dr Busuttil a trust score of 8.5 while Dr Muscat received a score of 2.2.

Those who say they will be voting PL in the upcoming election have given Dr Muscat a score of 9.4 while giving Dr Busuttil a score of 2.0.

The May 2017 iSurvey – the tenth of its kind – was commissioned to Business Leaders Malta on behalf of The Malta Independent. A total of 500 respondents were used, representative of age, gender and spread of localities. With such a sample size, the margin of error is +/- 4%.