The opinion survey published last Sunday cannot pass without comment. It showed three things with absolute certainty and clarity.
First, the largest number or group of voters will vote Nationalist and Yes in the referendum. This group, at 42% and 47% of those surveyed respectively, are close to half the voting population.
Second, the Labour Party, so far at least, is trailing abysmally and could be set for one of their worst electoral results despite the masses of heavily chested screaming young Labour women who packed Marsa recently, drowning out the horror of public rabbit slaughtering!
Third, the undecided voters (if they are really undecided, as I suspect, many do not want to say what their intentions are) are still large and, added up, the undecided and won't tell together, have practically a third of the voting population of 29%!
As many of these are clearly people who normally have Labour sympathies, this country's future is in their hands.
Which brings me to one of the central ideas in this article. There is this popular but wrong idea among Nationalist voters that Labour voters are the more blinkered and less likely to be floaters. I am endlessly told that it is the Nationalist voter who is the floater.
I beg to differ and these results confirm this.
If you look and consider what has happened since Alfred Sant tried playing at being Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition when he should really be in charge of MLP publications (!) the number and calibre of MLP dissenters has been enormous.
Lists of names can be boring, but people like Lino Spiteri, Alex Sceberras Trigona and George Abela are just not people a political party with a very small catchment of a couple of hundred thousand people could afford to lose.
Down South in Cottonera in the last election Labour voters, disgusted at Dr Sant's treatment of Dom Mintoff, gave the Nationalist Party two seats. Two Labour mayors of Cospicua, Joe Carbonaro and Pawlu Muscat, have fallen out with the MLP and no wonder! This in an area known to have the staunchest of Labour supporters.
Clearly there are many intelligent floaters in Cottonera too!
If you look at the number of Labour-leaning people in that Sant-made-them-famous company, Wheres Everybody?, you begin to understand how many Labour voters are sick of being unfairly attacked by their own party, the party of their families and the party they grew up with.
In fact in recent years it has been only prominent Labour personalities who have stuck their neck out, disagreed with their party and lost their political career advancement in the process. Do you remember any public dissension, resignations or major fallouts in the Nationalist fold? Almost nothing to date.
More importantly it has been Labour voters (you know, the ones some Nationalists think incapable of thinking) who have consistently, since 1981, voted with their heads and not their hearts and voted for the PN.
The slowly growing support for Malta to be part of the EU and the tiny percentage of people who say they will vote for the MLP should really be a worry for Labour.
How can one explain how Malta's biggest or second biggest political party only getting 20% saying they will definitely vote for them? Where are the other 30%? Why are they so undecided about the MLP?
Clearly, thinkers and floaters and disillusioned Labour voters are everywhere.
Where will they go in the next election? Is there a chance that Alternattiva Demokratika could benefit from this windfall?
It has been heartening to note that AD have recently slightly changed tactics. It is a tactic I applaud because it is morally fairer and superior, but also because they could do much better. If they had employed this strategy for a little longer than a few months before an election they could even have got a seat in Parliament.
Previously their tactic was to attack both parties as being big, bad and ugly. This was pathetic when you compare the abysmal record of the MLP and the PN on two fronts, the economic and the democratic.
Like them or not, the PN simply has a much better record in letting us all feel free, make our own money and get on with our own lives. The MLP, on the other hand, has an unenviable history of violence, intimidation and, worst of all poverty, as the only jobs were to be found in military corps and other nightmares that a whole new generation of voters almost cannot believe when you tell them.
They are still unfair on the PN, even though both the PN and AD agree on one thing: EU membership will be beneficial for this country and for its talented people.
The more AD try to get PN voters to vote for them the less likely we all are to win the referendum and get into the EU as well as to also win the election after.
So AD have switched tactics and are now targeting Labour voters far more. And this is as it should be.
This has been evident in the words of their leader but also in a recent article from their PRO who replaced the usual AD diatribe against both parties with a clear appeal to Labour voters.
It is clear though that the Nationalist Party should also do more to appeal to this very large group of Labour floaters. There are after all a considerable number of Nationalists who are not pro-EU, some for reasons which are so inane I despair for the selfishness of these people.
But for a true Labourite EU membership makes sense. EU membership is, after all, best for workers' rights, the bedrock of any Labour voter. Intelligent Labour voters do not want a return to the old Labour way of life. And we now know they have not changed.
What kind of political party will only respect more than 60% as a majority? If we followed that principle we would have had no governments in Malta for decades!
What kind of political party only makes a U-turn on a very important tax on the eve of an election?
What kind of political party only speaks to its own converted at mass meetings and is afraid to appear on the most popular programmes in this country?
What kind of political party tells you we will lose Maltese if we go into the EU (but the EU has recognised it as an official language!) and then uses English for all its slogans like Switzerland in the Med and partnership?
What kind of intelligent Labour voter can trust Alfred Sant again?
Watching him waving his hands around at the Chamber of Commerce where a staggering 91% (these are the country's most important employers, no less) seem to think the EU is a good route for business was such an eye opener.
He told us times were good in the Seventies! And one man in the audience reminded him they were only good for some! Whatever the corruption and problems we have now, the totally-in-your-face business corruption of the Seventies, where permits were only obtained for cash, are hardly events anyone in business wants to go back to?
Dr Sant and his U-turns are simply not fit to govern. Intelligence and a vote for the MLP led by him is simply not an option for any intelligent Labour voter... The intelligent Labour floater will let us into Europe or keep us out. Hold on tight for an exciting six weeks!