Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1096093
14 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 24 MARCH 2019 NEWS EUROPE 2019 THE Labour Party is set to win four seats in the Euro- pean Parliament election next May, according to projections based on the latest MaltaTo- day survey. The Nationalist Party will clinch two seats as it loses ground over the result ob- tained five years ago. Malta has six seats in the European Parliament and in 2014 the PN managed to clinch its third seat by a few hundred votes at the end of the vote counting process. An exercise carried out by MaltaToday, using figures from the March survey re- leased a fortnight ago, shows that the PL starts as a strong favourite at the first count to capture four seats. The exercise is based on de- clared voting intention and does not attribute party pref- erence to those who said they were unsure who to vote for in the upcoming May election. PL: Four quotas to start with According to the projec- tion, the Labour Party could be looking at a voting share of 59%, four points more than what it achieved in the 2017 general election. The numbers suggest that the PL could amass four quo- tas and a bit more at the first count. This means that the party will not only have four seats under its belt at first count but a number of votes that it could afford to lose throughout the transfer pro- cess. Votes are lost when they become non-transferable at some stage of the counting process. By contrast, in the 2014 election the PL started the race with a solid three quotas and fell short of a fourth. PN: An elusive third quota The PN is projected to se- cure two quotas at first count but fall short of a third in the May election. This is nothing new for the Opposition party because in 2014 it obtained a similar re- sult at first count but man- aged to secure the third seat at the death. However, the projections point towards a major differ- ence between the forthcom- ing election and that of five years ago. Current polls are giving the PL four seats at first count, which means the PN's attempt to clinch a third seat this time around not only depends on the number of votes the par- ty manages to retain at each count and possibly gain, but also on the PL losing votes. The PN's feat this time may also be hampered by internal friction that could see a sec- tion of its traditional voters – being referred to in political quarters as the Daphne crowd – who may opt to stay away from the hustings or give their preference to one or two PN candidates and stop at that. The latter option could spell the death knell for the PN's Labour on course to clinch four EP seats Projections based on the latest MaltaToday survey show the PN has an uphill struggle to cling on to the third seat it won at the death of time in the 2014 European Parliament election. KURT SANSONE reports MEP ELECTIONS 2019 Party Vote share Votes Quotas Projected seats PL 59.5% 153,033 4.16 4 PN 38.4% 98,764 2.69 2 Others 2.1% 5,401 0.15 0 MEP ELECTIONS 2014 Party Vote share Votes Quotas Actual seats PL 53.4% 134,462 3.74 3 PN 40% 100,785 2.80 3 Others 6.6% 16,604 0.46 0 Step 1: Eligible voters There were 351,483 Mal- tese people aged 16 and over registered as voters in the last electoral register published in October. Given that the May election is for the European Parliament, EU citizens in Malta can also vote. The num- ber of EU citizens registered to vote is 18,160. This means that for the pur- pose of this calculation the number of eligible voters is as- sumed to be 369,643. A new electoral register is ex- pected in April, which means the number of registered vot- ers may be slightly higher. Step 2: Basis on which EP vote is projected For the purpose of this exer- cise, the EP election result is being modelled on the find- ings of the March MaltaToday survey. The raw MT survey results produced the following rel- evant numbers: No vote: 13.2%; Don't know: 13.9%; No answer: 1.9%; PL: 42.3%; PN: 27.3%; Others: 1.5% If the people who did not de- clare a voting intention are re- moved from the equation, the projected results for the politi- cal parties would be: PL: 59.5%; PN: 38.4%; Others: 2.1% Step 3: Key assumptions Those who said they will not vote, are unsure and did not answer – a total of 29% – will stay at home on 25 May. This gives a turnout of 71%, which compares favourably with the turnout of 75% in the last EP election of 2014. It is assumed that from those who turn out to vote, 98% will cast a valid vote. This percent- age is based on the last EP elec- tion in 2014. These figures will give a na- tional quota of 36,744 votes, which is the number a candi- date has to reach to get elected. The quota is calculated by dividing the number of valid votes cast by seven (one more than the number of seats that have to be elected), plus one. Eligible voters: 369,643 Turnout at 71%: 262,447 Valid votes cast 98%: 257,198 Quota of votes to get elected: 36,744 Step 4: Projected seats in May 2019 The projected results ob- tained by the political parties in the MT survey are used to cal- culate the projected number of votes they could be expected to receive in the election. This is worked as a percentage of valid votes cast. The votes projected for each party are divided by the quo- ta to determine how many quotas the party is expected to have totted up at the first count. This is indicative of the number of seats that are likely to go the party's way. The results of the 2014 MEP election show how the number of projected seats the parties started with at the first count was a good reflection of how they eventually ended up. The quota in 2014 was 35,979. The projection The PN's serving MEPs, (from left) Francis Zammit Dimech, Roberta Metsola and David Casa, are all up for re-election