The Electoral Commission will soon publish the declared expenses of our general election candidates. The numbers will help us with questions like: how much does a parliamentary seat cost these days? And what will happen if the entire country is reduced to a single electoral district?
Some readers will be sceptical about how truthful the declared expenses are. However, if politicians fiddle their expenses, they still have to come up with a number that sounds realistic enough not to provoke an investigation. That’s good enough to help us gauge how well-funded a political candidate must be to make it into parliament.
The law permits a maximum of €20,000 to be spent on a single district. Running on two districts permits some economies of scale. In 2017, the candidate who spent most was Owen Bonnici (€27,641) and the runner-up was one Robert Abela (€26,995).
Abela was contesting for the first time. Bonnici had a difficult fight on his hands in his home district and, indeed, was elected only from his other district. Winning a seat in parliament doesn’t depend only on the money spent.
Position within your political party matters. In 2017, Joseph Muscat and Simon Busuttil had no personal campaign expenses. Being a deputy leader helps, too.
Konrad Mizzi had low expenses for someone gifting voters with wine carrying a personalised label; wicked tongues will murmur the Panama Prince must have populated those bottles with his assets. But Mizzi’s notoriety will have given him free publicity and mobilised support among the base on the cheap, as would the fact that he was lavished with Muscat’s favour.
Mizzi’s case illustrates another point, however. He gifted the wine in order to surpass his district rival, Chris Fearne (who gifted his voters with oranges). An ambitious candidate needs to maximise his or her votes, ideally to top the district.
Campaign money isn’t spent only to become an MP. It’s spent to help a politician stake a claim to a cabinet position. Politicians who want leading roles, in their party or government, need to spend more.
An incumbent minister can use taxpayers’ money for publicity material, under the guise of informing us what his or her ministry is doing. If that loophole is eliminated by stricter enforcement, ministers’ campaign expenses will creep closer to the €20,000 mark.
It’s not all about money. It helps to have an existing electoral base thanks to incumbency, being mayor in a large town, or politics being a family business. So does prominence in the party and its media. There’s generational luck: the retirement of a senior politician leaves thousands of votes up for grabs. And episodic luck: a district rival who is vulnerable because of public scandal or personal problems.
Given these factors, it’s simplistic to calculate the average cost of a vote. In 2017, the highest ‘cost’ was €12 (for a politician who had been through scandal), while many MPs paid around a third of that. But that calculation leaves out the natural advantages of incumbency and media prominence. No two candidates are the same.
Why does this matter? It helps us understand the disadvantages faced by independent and third-party candidates. They have no incumbency and not enough media prominence. Under the current rules, they probably need to pay more for a seat in parliament.
Money alone doesn’t guarantee a seat- Ranier Fsadni
Yet, they are the ones who usually spend a lot less. They may find it more difficult to raise substantial campaign donations. They’re usually challenging the status quo and entrenched commercial interests.
How are such candidates likely to fare if our electoral law is reformed and – as the prime minister has sometimes mooted – Malta becomes a single electoral district? A lot worse.
We have the example of the 2019 European elections, whose legal spending ceiling is €50,000.
Money alone doesn’t guarantee a seat. Cyrus Engerer spent €44,397 and wasn’t elected until Miriam Dalli gave up her seat in 2020; she spent €18,000 less (but had other, substantial advantages).
Alfred Sant was elected after spending €17,736; Robert Micallef (Labour) spent almost as much with very few votes to show for it. Frank Psaila (PN) had a good run with a spend of €15,716; David Casa had to sweat as well as spend three times as much, €44,653.
Those names are enough to tell you personal expenses aren’t the whole story. But it’s certainly an important part. The biggest spender was Josianne Cutajar and she herself explained her bill of €47,042 as being the price to pay for being a complete unknown.
Camilla Appelgren, a Democratic Party candidate who spent nothing, was able to obtain some 3,000 votes – nowhere near the 37,000 votes she needed. Considerable free publicity for her environmental campaigns helped only in a very limited way.
Making Malta a single district for general elections will considerably raise the amount of money needed to be elected, even if the vote quotas will be a fraction of the EP quotas.
Unlike the EP elections, where all you need is to get elected, the general election will see ambitious politicians seeking to maximise their personal vote and, therefore, needing to spend more. There will be roughly 10 times as many candidates chasing the same limited number of sponsors. It will be a donor’s market.
It’s a recipe for increasing the influence of big donors over our policies and laws. It will also increase the importance of the big national party machines. Which candidate a leader favours will become more important in distinguishing one name from a hundred others.
There are ways to help third parties, with a national profile, get the representation they deserve. But greatly reducing the number of electoral districts, even to one?
It’s another of those beautiful visionary ideas that our leaders like to come up with, with the ostensible aim of giving voters more choice but the most unfortunate result of strengthening the grip of the powerful.