Survey shows big parties losing support in EP elections

Support for the two larger political parties waned while that for Alternattiva Demokratika remained unchanged, a survey conducted by Xarabank in connection with today week's elections for the European Parliament shows.

The findings show that 24.4 per cent of the respondents said they would vote for Nationalist Party candidates, while 20.2 per cent said they would cast their vote for Labour Party candidates. Another 23.2 per cent said they were undecided, 16.6 per cent said they did not want to answer the question and 9.3 per cent of the respondents said they were not going to vote. AD support stood at 4.7 per cent while support for other parties and/or independent candidates was lower than 0.5 per cent each.

Compared to the first Xarabank survey published last week support for the PN dropped by 5.7 per cent, while the MLP lost 2.3 per cent in terms of support. The largest increase was in the segment of respondents who said they refused to answer, up from 9.2 per cent to 16.6 per cent. Support for AD remained at the same level.

When eliminating those who said they refused to answer, the undecided, and those who said they would not vote in the EP election, the results show that the relative majority of respondents (48.1 per cent) would vote for the PN. This is followed by 39.9 per cent who said they would vote for MLP and 9.4 per cent who said their vote would go to AD.

Among those who refused to answer, the large majority - 88.2 per cent - also refused to say how they voted in the last general election and 5.9 per cent said they had voted PN and 3.4 per cent for the MLP. In the previous week, among those who refused to answer, 84.6 per cent also refused to state how they voted in last year's election; 10.8 per cent said they had voted for the PN and 1.5 per cent for the MLP.

In this scenario, when comparing the results with those of the previous week, it is evident that support for the PN went down by almost two per cent in a week while support for Labour rose by 1.7 per cent. AD's support also increased over the past week, by 1.2 per cent.

In addition, 60.3 per cent of those who had voted for the PN in 2003 said they would vote for PN candidates in this election, down from 66.2 per cent last week. The cross tabulation shows that 8.6 per cent of those who had voted PN in last year's election will now vote for AD (last week's percentage was 8.2 per cent). With regard to the MLP, those who said they voted Labour in 2003 and will vote for the MLP in the EP elections stood at 78.1 per cent (80.7 per cent last week). Respondents who said they voted MLP in 2003 and would now vote AD amounted to only 0.7 per cent and is on the same level as last week's survey.

The percentage of respondents who said they voted PN in the 2003 election and would vote MLP in the EP election was 4.3 per cent (up from last week's 1.7 per cent). The percentage who voted MLP in 2003 and who will vote for the PN in this year's election was nil, as was the case last week.

The findings show that 51.1 per cent (59.9 per cent in last survey) of those who voted "yes" for the EU last year said they will vote for PN candidates in the EP election. Those who voted "no" in the referendum and who will vote for MLP candidates amounted to 70.3 per cent (75.3 per cent in last survey) and 8.9 per cent (7.4 per cent in last survey) of those who voted in favour of Malta's accession into the EU will be voting for AD in the EP election.

The majority of respondents, 52 per cent, said they will vote for one party in the EP election (similar to last week's survey results), while 18.8 per cent said they will vote for more than one party (compared to 21.9 per cent) and 29.1 per cent said they were undecided (19.8 per cent).

Forty six per cent of the respondents consider Malta's EU accession a positive development (49.6 per cent) while 24.8 per cent said it was a negative one (21.4 per cent), 19.7 per cent said they were undecided (17.1 per cent) and 9.5 per cent said they would wait for future results before deciding whether it is positive or negative (11.3 per cent).

This survey was carried out by Malta Polls on behalf of Xarabank. Random sampling was used in this survey, whereby a representative sample of 821 respondents was earmarked as the sample size and was selected from Maltacom's telephone directory. In total, 1,144 people were contacted for the survey, out of whom 323 (or 28 per cent) refused to participate.

The estimated margin of error based on a sample size of 821 was about +/- three per cent.