Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1487299
14 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 4 DECEMBER 2022 KURT SANSONE ROBERT Abela and Ber- nard Grech have seen their trust rating increase since October with the Nation- alist leader recovering al- most four points, Malta- Today's December survey shows. The Prime Minister reg- isters 47.8% on the trust barometer, an uptick of al- most one point, while the Opposition leader scores 22%. The trust gap between the two leaders now stands at 25.8 points, which is down from the 28.8 points recorded in October. Abela's upward move- ment goes against his par- ty's fortunes. The Labour Party experiences a three- point decrease since Octo- ber. On the opposite end, the Nationalist Party leader's higher trust rating follows his party's improved for- tunes. Abela earns the trust of 89.5% of those who voted for the PL in the March general election. He also earns the trust of 5% of Nationalist voters, bucking his own party's result – the survey shows the PL gain- ing no voters from PN. Grech earns the trust of 57.6% of PN voters and 1.6% of PL voters. Al- though Grech's trust rat- ing among PN voters has improved by five points, he still has a problem to convince Nationalists to trust him. The survey shows that 32.5% of PN voters in the last election trust no one. The trust barometer shows Abela beating Grech among men and women, across all age groups and all regions. Among those aged be- tween 16 and 35, the Prime Minister scores a trust rat- ing of 45.8% as opposed to Grech's 16.6%. The clos- est the two leaders come is among pensioners with Abela scoring 45.4% and Grech 36.5%. On a geographical ba- sis, Grech does not follow his party's fortunes in the Northern and Northern Harbour regions, where he trails Abela like every- where else. Abela does best in the South-Eastern region, where he scores 64.1% against Grech's poorly 7.5%. In Gozo, Abela registers a trust rating of 43.4% against Grech's 31.1%. The findings suggest that the abortion debate kick-started by govern- ment's proposed amend- ment to introduce an ex- ception to Maltese law, does not seem to have in- fluenced people's trust in the leaders. Abela wins among pen- sioners, normally consid- ered to be the most con- servative cohort, and beats Grech in Gozo, a bulwark of conservativism. Addi- tionally, the Prime Minis- ter earns the trust of more Nationalists than Grech gains from Labourites. MALTATODAY SURVEY Abela trounces Grech all around despite PN leader's trust bounce Methodology The survey was carried out between Tuesday 22 November 2022 and Thursday 1 December 2022. 650 respondents opted to complete the survey. Stratified random sampling based on region, age and gender was used to replicate the Maltese demographic. The estimated margin of error is 4.2% for a confidence interval of 95% for the overall results. Demographic and sub-group breakdowns have significantly larger margins of error.