Strong winds are forecast for Saturday afternoon, which has political parties concerned it will become increasingly difficult to encourage voters to cast their ballot as the day goes on.

The Meteorological office at Malta International Airport told Times of Malta it expects force 5 to force 6 winds to lash the island on Saturday, with gusts reaching speeds of of up to 25 knots by the late afternoon. 

The windy weather will be caused by a trough of low pressure over Algeria that will be moving eastwards towards the central Mediterranean. 

Despite the gusty weather, voters will be able to leave their raincoats at home: a previous forecast of light showers has now been revised and no rain is expected on Saturday. 

Malta will hold its general election on Saturday, with polling stations open from 7am until 10pm. 

Political parties are always wary of bad weather on voting day, as it is deemed a leading cause of voter abstention.  

Sources involved in the electoral campaign said they were focused on pushing for a strong voter turnout in the first half of the day.  

“We will have a good idea of the turnout by around 2pm. Pushing it up after that is always a struggle and if it is really windy this certainly won’t help,” one senior source said. 

Both Labour leader Robert Abela and his Nationalist counterpart Bernard Grech have been urging voters to collect their documents in the run-up to Saturday's vote. 

Sources in the election strategy teams of the two main political parties say this election could see the lowest turnout in recent electoral history. 

Malta’s election turnout, among the highest in Europe, has been on a steady decline and party sources fear that turnout could dip to as low as 87 or 88 per cent in Saturday's election. 

Earlier on Friday, Times of Malta reported that more than 14,000 voters had not picked up their voting documents by the close of the deadline at midnight on Thursday night.  

This is up from the 8,372 that remained uncollected in the 2017 general election, however, the voting population is notably larger this time around.

Districts 12 and 10 registered the highest proportional share of uncollected voting documents for Saturday's general election, data obtained by Times of Malta indicated.