What last week’s election tells us about Labour, the PN and voters

Last week’s election delivered a familiar result with a different message, showing that while Labour remains Malta’s dominant political force, its grip has weakened as the PN begins to recover lost ground.

Labour secured another comfortable victory but one with a drastically reduced margin, giving the party several reasons to celebrate but also offering another signal, following the 2024 European Parliament elections, of dwindling support.

Meanwhile, PN will be delighted to have avoided the drubbing predicted by some pre-electoral polls, but is nonetheless facing another spell in opposition, with significant ground to cover over the next five years.

As the election enters the history books, we look back at what the election tells us about both parties and Malta’s electorate.

New hope for PN

There is little doubt that this marks PN’s best electoral result in almost two decades.

The party has spent much of the past 20 years fearing the worst on counting day, with the gap between the two parties frequently approaching the 40,000-vote mark.

But, perhaps for the first time since 2008, PN supporters have some reason to be cheerful following the count.

While a 22,000-vote defeat would still be considered a landslide in the past, it means Labour’s gap has effectively been slashed in half, dropping from over 11 percentage points in each of the previous three elections to 7.1% this time around.

The results show that the party has recovered from its 2022 drubbing, in which voters had abandoned the party in droves, dropping its vote count to the lowest levels in modern history.

However, PN officials will know that they still have their work cut out to increase their voter base over the next five years.

The 136,700 votes the party received last week are 1,000 more than it received in its 35,000-vote defeat in 2017, and 4,000 more than its 2013 loss.

And it remains well below the number of voters that supported the party in its most recent electoral victories in 2003 and 2008.

Labour’s strength is tested

Labour secured a record fourth term in government, but party insiders know they will need to look more frequently over their shoulder if they hope to secure a fifth.

With 51.8% of the vote, Labour saw its share of the vote drop to its lowest tally since the pre-Joseph Muscat days.

The party also appears to have lost some of the floating voters who supported the party over the past 13 years, with its voter tally dipping from the peak of 171,000 in 2017 to 158,000 today.

While party insiders will, perhaps justifiably, argue that a 22,000-vote victory represents a strong showing for a government entering its fourth term, the result suggests that the party has only partly recovered from the shock of the 2024 European Parliament election results, when the party won by a relatively narrow 8,500-vote majority.

PN gains, Labour dips across districts

The two parties’ overall performance is reflected just as clearly in each electoral district.

Labour has generally seen its share of the vote decline slightly, not just from its record 2022 result, but also compared to previous elections held since 2013.

This is even the case in its traditional strongholds.

All five women elected on PL ticket given Cabinet posts

In District 2, where the party had won over 71% of the vote ever since 2013, it has now inched down to 67%. Likewise, in District 5, Labour’s share has dropped by four percentage points compared with previous elections.

The party recorded similar drops in districts that went PN’s way.

PN, by contrast, appears to be moving in the opposite direction, making slight gains across virtually all districts.

Its most important gains were in Labour-leaning districts, with its share of the votes in districts 2, 3 and 5 all comfortably higher than at any point since 2013.

It has also held on to its traditionally high share in its own strongholds of districts 9 and 10.

And, having lost heavily in Gozo four years ago, PN has recovered its share to a level just below what it recorded in 2013.

Gender quota undergoes its first test

Sunday’s vote count would have brought comfort to supporters of Malta’s gender corrective mechanism in its first proper test since it was introduced in 2022.

Two women who had previously been elected through the mechanism, Alicia Bugeja Said and Eve Borg Bonello, made it through on their own steam this year. Meanwhile, several others improved their tally compared to previous elections.

Two of the election’s outstanding performers, Miriam Dalli and Rebekah Borg, were women, both elected in two districts.

Meanwhile, all five women elected on the Labour ticket were given posts in Robert Abela’s mammoth cabinet.

Ultimately, women won 12 seats in parliament this year, more than doubling 2022’s figure, when women were awarded just five seats at this stage of the election.

This year’s tally could increase even further once casual elections are held over the coming weeks, with several women in contention to take over from MPs who have renounced a seat.

The mechanism is set to kick in again once casual elections are held, adding up to 12 further women to the parliamentary benches.

Heading into the election, many expected voter turnout to dip even further than 2022’s all-time low of 85.6%.

The signs were all there: a government set to comfortably win a fourth term, an opposition still finding its feet following a tumultuous period, and a public that seemed increasingly disengaged with the tit-for-tat of party politics.

Instead, election day threw up a surprise, with voter turnout increasing slightly for the first time in decades.