No sooner had the horns stopped blaring and the festivities celebrating victory in the last general election ended, than the enigmatic floater who some say decided the last election was forgotten. Is the floater a factor in the European and local council elections?

During the last election we heard quite a lot about floaters. I am not sure who was a floater and who was not. But according to many there was a significant number of them who, for better or worse, had more influence than the rest of the voters. This is mainly due to the demographic nature of the voting public in Malta.

There are those who support the Nationalists irrespective of how they perform in government and there are those who support Labour come what may. The remaining 10,000 or 15,000 apparently 'float'.

It was clear that during the last election some hesitated until the last minute how or whether to vote. What factors made them hesitate?

Some formed part of this dubious category for personal reasons. Some also felt that arrogance had crept into the government, after so many years in power and that it was time for a change.

The number of corruption charges made during the last election campaign might also have had some effect, although there was no time to prove or disprove any of these charges, and interest in this more or less abated once the result was known.

Then there was the question of personalities or candidates in the relevant parties. A number of them in both the major parties had a good reputation and would have done well with those floaters who tended to also look for individuals they could trust irrespective of party. It appears now that this category of voter might have voted not simply for a party but also primarily for the person or people they held in high esteem and whose work in previous legislatures had earned them a good reputation. On the other hand, this was not enough to prick some into voting and therefore we saw large numbers staying away from the polls and apparently hurting the party in government.

In the end the feeling of some floaters in the voting booth appeared to have been that the PN deserved to continue to govern.

This might have decided the outcome of the election. The very close result, however, should have raised the alarm that all was not well for the PN and therefore prompt a careful analysis of the reasons that so many voters stayed away and that some decided to vote only at the last minute.

It is natural that with the next general election four years away this matter loses all urgency, and as a result we may never know the real anatomy of the floater.

It is not expected that the floater will play such an important role in the upcoming local elections or the elections for the European Parliament. I have heard it said before that the elections for the local councils do not reflect one way or the other what happens in the general election. There may be some truth in that, at least from the experience of the few local elections that we had since local councils were established.

We have even less experience with the elections for the European Parliament and the effect of the floater here will probably be even less pronounced.

Fewer people will vote in the European elections, but for different reasons.

This may bring down the total of votes for the local councils too. In Malta, as always, people will probably vote in greater numbers than in any other place in Europe, where according to a recent eurobarometer poll only about 34 per cent are likely to vote.

So it appears that the floater is only a phenomenon during the general election but one that must not be ignored or forgotten because four years pass very quickly and the floater may return with a vengeance to again play the role of kingmaker.

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