Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1122313
13 maltatoday | MONDAY • 27 MAY 2019 EUROPE 2019 THE drubbing suffered by the Nation- alist Party on Sunday was foretold in surveys carried out by MaltaToday in the last months of the campaign. The only real difficulty was predict- ing turnouts in such a fluid scenario: those not opting not to indicate a pref- erence on vote intent were assumed to be part of a non-participating elector- ate usually attributed to those who did not collect the vote, those who did not go out and vote, and finally those who invalidated their vote. There were 371,625 eligible vot- ers from which around 261,000 valid votes were cast, equivalent to over 70% of the total eligible votes. The total number of valid votes cast as- sumed for the poll published on the 19 May 2019 was 71.35% whereas the predicted turnout on the 5 May stood at 76.02%. Based on the latest projection, the PL was expected to garner some 55.9% whereas the PN is projected to gain 36.2% of the spoils leading to a 19.7% gap. As for the polls conducted by Mal- taToday published on the 5 and 19 May, both seem to have predicted correctly the margin between the two parties, whereby in the first instance the mar- gin was estimated at 19.84% whereas the latest published poll indicated an 18.67% difference, after stripping those who did not reveal a vote intent. This translated into a 56,050 vote difference for the 5 May poll whereas the latest poll produced a forecast of 49,500 vote difference. Various factors contributed to such a close prediction of both the absolute numbers garnered by the parties and the vote margin expected between the two big parties. Primarily, the consistent methodol- ogy adopted whereby every sample, no matter how big or small, is designed to represent the various demographic indicators of the Maltese population. The PL marginally increased its vote share with respect to the general elec- tion whereby it went from 55.0% to 55.9% (+0.9%) whereas the PN haem- orrhaged a massive 5.9% since the last general election. This seems to indicate that PL has reached a saturation point of maxi- mum votes and what is most self-ev- ident is the fragmentation of the PN that plays into a larger margin with respect to the PL, on subsequent elec- toral exercises. Moreover, had this election yielded a general election type turnout (a con- servative 90%) the PN would be look- ing at vote difference of some 64,000 votes, in line with serial MT surveys published over the last year. Both polls seemed to indicate an ab- solute slightly larger share for the two big parties. The small parties were forecast to garner 3.88% and 3.05% respectively from the two polling exercises. The small parties are expected to gain some 7.9%. The underscoring by the small parties especially for the far- right parties remains a phenomenon to be understood. From both polling exercises Norman Lowell's party was expected to garner 4,206 votes for the latest poll and 4,454 votes for the poll carried earlier on during the month of May. From the latest figures on Sun- day Imperium Europa is projected to garner some 8,626 votes. How various events and factors con- tributed to this underscoring by the far-right remains to be seen. The margin of error for the latest poll was 4.2% for a confidence interval of 95% equivalent to 15,608 votes. MaltaToday surveys called 19-point gap PL PN Gap Others Valid votes Vote Margin cast between assumed PN and PL Polling Day 55.9% 36.2% 19.7% 7.90% 70.40% 51,540 19th May 57.81% 39.14% 18.67% 3.05% 71.350% 49,504 5th May 57.98% 38.14% 19.84% 3.88% 76.02% 56,050