The Norman Lowell factor – try to untangle the thinking
Published:
May 28, 2014 at 12:08am
Of Norman Lowell’s votes which could be transferred after he fell out of the race, 900+ went to Alternattiva Demokratika, 1,000 to the Nationalist Party and 1,900 to Labour.
I’m trying to work out what sort of person would vote No. 1 Norman Lowell and No. 2 Arnold Cassola. The rest are probably your common or garden ‘irid nibghat messagg’ (just send an email next time, my dears, and use your vote for its proper purpose) – though it’s interesting to see that there are twice as many Norman Lowell voters whose second preference is Labour than there are whose second preference is PN.
31 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
Those with Labour as a second preference could be from the hunting lobby, a ”traditional” Maltese past-time.
There may also have been those who voted first for AD and then for IE. The IE/ AD voters are probably those who want to show the lack of confidence in the main parties.
They are the ones with a serious identity crisis. No informed voter would vote even as a protest.
That’s your biased opinion . Many well educated people voted for him not necessarily because they wanted him in Brussels but to show the main parties that many of his arguments are valid and that the electorate want to see these issues addressed.
Simon, voting for someone means that you want him/her elected irrespective of what one’s intentions are. Only non-thinking people use their votes to ‘protest.’ If you disagree with all the candidates then just don’t vote.
Simon, those who think that any of Lowell’s arguments is valid have something wrong with the way their minds work. Formal education does not come into it.
Like you always say there is a problem with adults in this country
Considering that there are people who still believe that left handers are going to hell and that one gets sick if he showers and then goes out, do you think that these voters actually analyzed and reasoned their voting preferences? You do know that some people use phone-ins on TV and radio to get a medical diagnosis and some pop a single antibiotic when they have dental pain, don’t you?
They also have a vote and if there are enough of them they are the ones who decide how you and I live.
Painful but true.
The math is actually quite simple. Let’s start with the premise that all (or nearly all) of Lowell’s supporters are lunatics like their leader. There are twice as many Labourite lunatics than there are Nationalist lunatics. We already knew this.
The green Lowell supporter must have an identity crisis or is simply the looniest lunatic around.
hilarious, thank you
It’s comforting to know that are more Labourite racist bigots than Nationalist.
There is no logical explanation for people voting both Lowell and Cassola. How can there be?
The fact that there were hundreds of them is even more perplexing. On the other hand, it is perfetly understandable why others should vote for Lowell and the PL. Let us not forget that, before last year’s election, Lowell himself endorsed Joseph Muscat and his PL.
Lowell is a caricature and, on his own, would never have convinced more than a couple of hundred sociopaths. However he was unwittingly given a hand by Muscat himself, both before and after the general election.
It was Muscat who helped create the public sentiment that we are being invaded and undergoing The Third Great Siege. Remember his praise for Italian minister Maroni who was carrying out wholesale pushbacks and even refusing to pick up the boat people?
His behaviour back then had disgusted even Matthew Vella of Malta Today, usually so benevolent towards Muscat.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/comment/blogs/476/on-immigration-joseph-muscat-fails-the-progressive-test#.U4T7-YGSz6s
More recent were Muscat’s own attempted pushbacks and his lashing out at Commissioner Wallstrom, giving the cue to his followers to express their bigotry and stupidity in even more colourful terms. Lowell and his cronies must have been delighted.
So now, when we wonder why Lowell got so many votes, we have to look at the context of what was happening in the last two or three years. For many people, Lowell is simply a more outspoken version of Muscat, saying what Muscat himself dare not openly say. I am sure he would have obtained many more votes had his admirers not voted PL out of loyalty to their party.
That also helps explain why many who voted Lowell also voted Labour. Seems they’re pretty much two sides of the same coin in the eyes of many.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/05/26/far-right-europe-election_n_5391873.html
I am not bothered about the relatively few votes for Lowell.
What really worries me is that so many people support a Prime Minister who makes a hero out of a criminal.
All four candidates endorsed by FKNK, Engerer, Cuschieri, Camilleri and Gouder have been eliminated.
Well spotted J Vella. There’s your negative symbol.
Busuttil to understand loyalty was commitment to the country’s membership of the EU. No-one will blame him if he adopts a personal opinion, one positive for the birds.
We also need to study the AD factor – a good number of its votes were inherited by PN.
Morning Daphne, that can happen in Malta’s voting system. Let me explain:
When Norman Lowell’s votes were opened for distribution and allocated they had to be allocated according to the candidates left for distribution and cannot become allocated to already eliminated candidates . If a voter, for example, voted number 1 for lowell, 2 and 3 for his other candidates, 4 and 5 to alleanza bidla, the 6 to alleanza liberali and 7 to Arnold Cassola, Than Mr Cassola gets Norman’s next preference….If there is no other candidate available to be allocated, than they become non-transafarable.
[Daphne – Madonna, how patronising. Does it not occur to you for one minute that I would know that. This is not about the way the voting system works. This is about how the minds of people who vote like that (don’t) work.]
I would not call Lowell a lunatic , more of a racist extremist – he’s actually quite clever, so if some of what he says strikes a chord with voters from all sides of the political pool of potential voters, the labour ones restricted by their limited IQ fall for it the others just see the bigger picture.
[Daphne – Norman Lowell is mentally unsound. Intelligence and mental problems are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, they very often go hand in hand. It fascinates me, the way people in Malta cannot recognise mental problems based on the available evidence. Not all people with mental problems are at Mount Carmel Hospital you know. Last year, there were at least two of them in parliament, parading their mental problems for every psychiatrist in the country to privately identify.]
Norman Lowell is actually quite stupid.
Daphne, its heartening to note you are not a psychologist or a psychiatrist. If that were the case, we would then need to build hundreds of mental institutes.
[Daphne – Mental illness does not necessarily require confinement in a hospital or clinic, David. People are only confined for treatment when they are a danger to themselves and/or others, or when they voluntarily seek treatment for something more minor.]
Ha ha, a Liberal saying someone is mentally unsound. Liberalism is a disease of the mind, people like Lowell are the cure.
[Daphne – If you know a psychiatrist as a friend, Auntie Liberal, I suggest you ask for his professional opinion about Norman Lowell. I certainly have done, just to make sure that my observations were correct – not that I needed to. Norman Lowell only looks mentally sound to those who are mentally unsound themselves. Half the country is on meds, so I’m really not surprised that he got 7,000 votes.]
Half the country is on meds, as you state because of? You certainly cannot blame Norman Lowell for that. It is a sad reflection on the present and past governments when half the nation need drugs to get through life.
[Daphne – It has nothing to do with the government, any government. It has to do with confinement and restrictions of all sorts, lack of privacy, lack of freedom, constant supervision, constant concern about what others think and see, acute boredom, no inner life, and cabin fever caused by the inability to drive more than a few miles in any direction.]
Not all those on meds really need them. I suspect we have many incompetent psychiatrists and psychologists.
[Daphne – Most meds like anti-anxiety pills and pills for depression are prescribed by general practitioners and family doctors, not by psychiatrists. Psychologists cannot prescribe medication. You have to be a doctor to do that. If the prescription of dangerous medication like Valium and similar were restricted to psychiatrists, we wouldn’t have half the problems with addiction that we have today, with people who don’t really need the medication being given prescriptions which they then can’t get off.]
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Outing-Maltas-racists/638586119541651?ref=hl
I know of a few people who were pestered by PL to vote.They went and voted for l-ajkla or Lowell
What do Labour and Norman Lowell have in common? Racism maybe?
Maybe we need to hold a referendum to decide on a referendum for people with an adequate IQ to be able to vote. Then a referendum is done to decided if we need to go ahead with the process in the first place. In doing so reminding people why people really need to vote.
It you heard Arnold Cassola speak in the last days of the election campaign, especially on TV stations like Xejk and Smash, you would have realised how he managed to get the anti immigration vote as he spoke of changes to the Dublin Treaty that sounded out of tune with what one could consider true Green policy.
I think Norman Vella has the right idea about the issue: https://www.facebook.com/vellanorman/photos/a.1380011312243676.1073741830.1375006862744121/1456659791245494/?type=1