Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1514108
11 SURVEY maltatoday | SUNDAY • 7 JANUARY 2024 makes it hard to draw any conclu- sions on their result. Significantly, among Labour vot- ers in 2022, both Cutajar (4.7%) and Engerer (1.4%) enjoy a lower level of trust than that enjoyed by Roberta Metsola (5.3%). On a re- gional level Cutajar only manages to leave a mark in her native Gozo where she is most trusted by 5% of respondents. Metsola given 3 marks out 5 Respondents were also asked to give a rating from 0 (lowest) to 5 (highest) to the EU's three top of- ficials; namely European Commis- sion President Ursula von der Ley- en, EU Council President Charles Michel and EU Parliament Presi- dent Roberta Metsola. A whopping 61% could not give Von der Leyen a rating while a stunning 80% could not rate Charles Michel, in a clear indica- tion that most Maltese respond- ents are not so keen on EU politics. Among the small minority of re- spondents who gave an answer the two top EU politicians are given a rating of 2.7 out 5. As expected, the Maltese were more forthcoming in rating Met- sola's performance even if 39% re- plied 'Don't Know'. Among the 61% who rated Met- sola's performance as EU Parlia- ment President, the Maltese politi- cian was given a favourable rating of 3 out of 5. Metsola receives a rating of 3.9 among PN voters in 2022 and 2.7 among current non-voters. Her rating drops to 2.1 among Labour voters. Metsola's overall favourable rat- ing is conditioned by the fact that 41% of PL voters in 2022 and 50% of current non-voters did not even bother rating Metsola's perfor- mance. This suggests that Metsola's rela- tively high rating reflects the high- er likelihood of PN voters to rate her performance. And despite Metsola's high pro- file in the local and international scene and expectations that she could eventually take on the PN leadership, 28% of PN voters still could not rate her performance as EU parliament president. Only 8% back EU policy on Gaza Respondents were also asked to rate the EU's collective response to the current war in Gaza. In a reflection of the lack of co- hesion on this issue, 69% could not express a judgement. This result reflects the different position taken between staunch supporters of Israel like Germany who were reticent on calling for a ceasefire and countries like Spain, France Belgium, Malta and Ire- land who have supported calls for a ceasefire. As a result of these disagree- ments the EU has limited itself to calling for 'humanitarian pauses.' The result also reflects the con- trast between the response of top officials like Von der Leyen and Roberta Metsola who rushed to Israel in the early days of the war to offer their unwavering support to Israel and the more nuanced stance of the EU's High Represent- ative for Foreign Affairs Josep Bor- rell who condemned Hamas but immediately called for restraint on Israel's part. Moreover, 23% expressed a neg- ative judgement because they per- ceive the EU to be too close to the Israeli position while only 8% ex- pressed a positive verdict. Only 0.4% expressed a negative judgement because they perceive a pro-Palestinian bias in the EU's collective response to the crisis. Tertiary educated voters were the most scathing in their nega- tive judgement of the EU's posi- tion. Among this category 31% expressed a negative judgment in view of the block's pro-Israeli bias. Similarly, 35% of those earning an income of between €2,000 and €3,000 also expressed a negative judgement for the same reason. PN voters in 2022 were also more likely to express a positive judge- ment on the EU's response to the crisis (16%) in contrast to just 4% of Labour voters. And while 17% of PN voters expressed a negative judgment, this sentiment was ex- pressed by 27% of PL voters. 26% of current non-voters also ex- pressed a negative judgement on the EU's response to the crisis. The survey was carried out was carried between 28th November 2023 and 6thDecember 2023 for which 650 people opted to complete the survey. Stratifiedrandom sampling based on region, gender and age was used. A fraction ofthose who opted to complete the survey chose not to answer a few of thequestions for which they are treated as missing values. Missing valuesanalysis was then carried to determine the type of technique to replace thevalues. A combination of logistic and linear regression with predictive meanmatching where applicable was used to replace certain missing valuescompleting and enlarging the sam- ple set from which the final results wereextracted. The margin of error for this result 3.84% for a confidence interval of95%. trusted Maltese MEP Voting intentions by Education Voting intentions by Gender Voting intentions by Region Voting intentions by Income This article forms part of a content series called Ewropej. 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