There’s more than one way to skin a cat
You get the results of a survey, publish them and then let everybody have a go at interpreting them.
Such a thing happened yesterday upon the publication of the most recent survey by MaltaToday.
The newspaper itself got a clear run on everybody else and came out claiming there is a clear case of electoral fatigue among the electorate.
The Labour media came out bragging that Prime Minister Joseph Muscat maintains the lead over Simon Busuttil by keeping a 7-point edge but then somehow skimmed over the next fact that Labour holds just a two-point lead over the PN and the other fact that both parties show a decrease in electoral support from last month. PN media boasted that the difference between the two parties is now down to one per cent.
This is, after all, just one survey among many but it is the only one running this weekend. This media house too does surveys and one will have to get more surveys so as to get a more overall picture.
In their Sunday messages, both leaders did not mention the survey but it would not be far away from their minds or the minds of their close advisors.
There seems to be an underlying trend which is not really highlighted in the analysis. This is the continued haemorrhage of people who voted PL in 2013 who either say they will not vote or even that they will vote PN next time. The survey says that more voters are shifting from Labour to the PN than vice-versa, with
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both Busuttil and the PN making significant inroads among traditional PL voters.
Traditional PL voters are taken as those who voted PL in 2008. Four per cent of these now say they would vote PN and five per cent of them say they trust Busuttil more than Muscat.
The survey also says that while one per cent of PN voters in 2013 would vote Labour now, four per cent of PL-in-2013 voters now opt for the PN. Significantly, five per cent of Labour voters in 2008 will vote PN.
The survey also shows Labour losing four points and the PN losing three over last month. This gives the lie to those on the Labour media who yesterday boasted that all the converged attacks on the Panama Papers by the PN and their ‘allies in the media’, as they called the independent media, have not registered any impact among the voters. They have.
These losses correspond to an increase in support for third parties, with AD surpassing the two-point mark for the first time since 2013 and Marlene Farrugia’s embryonic new party (which has not yet been officially launched) registering in the survey for the first time ever with 1.5%.
At the same time, the survey shows that the percentage of switchers who trust neither leader has shot up from 41.2% in March to a staggering 63% now. Muscat is now trusted by just 17% of switchers, down from 33.3% of switchers in March soon after the first Panama revelations came out, while only 12% trust Busuttil.
These are still early days. The survey shows 54% of switchers intending to abstain in the next election and only eight per cent intending to vote for the PL.
The survey blames what it calls fatigue, as the heat sets in and public activities wane. Political fatigue after weeks of intense political debate following the revelations of Panama Papers can be felt amongst voters. The survey shows both Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and Opposition leader lose three points in their trust rating.
Muscat maintains the lead over Busuttil by keeping a 7-point edge. Labour holds a onepoint lead over the PN but both parties show a decrease in electoral support from last month.
The situation is made rather more explicit in the paper itself, rather than in what appears on the website. PL leads by two points but this two-point gap between the two big political parties remains within the margin of error. In other words, either of the two parties can be leading.
The survey also shows the PN losing two per cent of its 2013 voters to the PL and the PL losing five per cent of its 2013 voters to the PN. This suggests that the PN is still making inroads among different categories of Labour voters. One-fifth of switchers are now intent on voting PN while a slightly higher percentage (23%) will vote PL again.
What seems to be new is that it seems that the PN is also attracting a small but strategic number of traditional PL voters. Three per cent of Labour voters in 2008 would vote for PN
PN is also seen as making significant inroads among non-voters in the 2013 election. While none of these non-voters would now vote PL, 16% would vote PN.