The Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando episode and Alternattiva Demokratika chairman Harry Vassallo's comments that he was to be sent to prison probably reduced the PN majority by half in the last five days of the electoral campaign, according to a detailed analysis of the result.

In the analysis (see pages 28, 29), Lawrence Zammit and Richard Cachia Caruana say that by the penultimate week the PN started to pick up a slight swing from the Labour Party, which could have given the PN a majority in the region of 3,000 to 4,000 votes and brought it closer to, if not over, the 50 per cent threshold.

However, those two developments worked against the Nationalist Party to such an extent that it then won by just 1580 votes by the time the election was held on March 8.

They also reveal that one of the main reasons the election swayed in the PN's favour was due to Lawrence Gonzi's "successful meetings" with thousands of disgruntled Nationalist voters towards the end of the campaign.

Mr Zammit and Mr Cachia Caruana, who had carried out a similar analysis after the general election of 1998, explain that the electoral result showed a desire for change, but it equally showed that a Labour government was not the change people were after.

The analysis also makes reference to the fact that in Labour circles there was much talk of a majority of up to 15,000 due to a major swing in its favour. But, it points out that the six per cent picked up by many polls was suspicious since the profile of these individuals was Labour not PN.