If a general election were to be held tomorrow, Labour would win by a majority of around 12,000 votes, according to a new survey by statistician and professor Vince Marmarà.

Published Saturday, the opinion poll reveals that no party is positioned to get the absolute majority of votes to govern, with Labour securing just over 48% and PN getting just over 44% of votes.

Around 80% of eligible voters would go to the polls, according to the survey, and a fifth of voters said they would not vote.

Despite Labour’s efforts to renew itself and come closer to voters over the summer, the result of Saturday’s poll essentially indicates the party is right where it was in June’s MEP and local council elections, which it won with 8,000 and 20,000 votes respectively.

Most non-voters are Labour

Most of the people who said they would not vote are voters who traditionally voted Labour or voted Labour in the 2022 general election, Marmarà found, which could indicate that they are sticking to the message they sent their party in June.

Labour is suffering from apathy from its own voters much more than the PN, but then again, disgruntled Labour voters prefer to stay at home than give their vote to the PN.

According to this poll, however, the pendulum would not swing as far the other way as a MaltaToday survey predicted two weeks ago. That poll concluded that the PN, not Labour, would win by a 12,000-vote majority if an election were to be held the next day. 

One constant is that there are no significant shifts from one party to another. Marmarà found most people do not seem eager to risk the leap to the other party yet, and many voters are staying on the fence, observing the game at a distance and will save their decision for later.

Marmarà, whose company Sagalytics has often been engaged by the Labour Party to conduct statistical research, said on Saturday that the survey was the first in a series of polls he is calling Is-Sondaġġ (The Survey).

He said he would be publishing the polls in a new online format on his own social media platforms, laying out the figures and allowing the media, political parties and the general public to do their analyses over the weekend.

The survey was carried out with a sample of 1,000 respondents during the first week of October and has a margin of error of 3.1%.

Over third of voters don’t trust Abela and Grech

Almost 40% of voters could not say they trust Robert Abela or Bernard Grech as their prime minister.

15% said they trust none of them, 8% said they do not know and almost 17% said they trust other leaders.

Abela, however, still enjoys much more trust over Grech.

Grech is trusted by 24% of voters whereas Abela enjoys a 12-point lead over him – 36%.

Of the respondents who voted Labour in the 2022 general election, less than three-quarters (74%) trust Abela as their prime minister.

1.3% of them have gained more trust in Grech since then, 8.5% trust no one and 13% trust some other leader.

Of the respondents who voted PN in 2022, 61% trust Grech as their prime minister, a meagre 0.1% now trust Abela more, almost 16% trust other leaders and 11% have not made up their mind yet.