Turn-out down on all districts except Gozo
Turn-out for the vote was 74.7%, with a decrease on all districts over the 2009 EP elections, except for Gozo where Labour is bound to have brought out the vote.
On the 10th district (Sliema, St Julian’s and Gzira), just 67.4% of registered voters turned up to vote. This is 7.5% fewer than in 2009. Let’s hope good sense prevailed and that it was the switchers who voted Labour last year, mainly for Manuel Mallia, who stayed home in protest at being let down.
Turn-out was down by around 4% in the first and second districts, both Labour strongholds (especially the second district, which includes Cottonera). In Zejtun, it was down by 5.6%.
The 12th district (Mellieha and St Paul’s Bay) saw a decrease in turn-out of 6%; St Paul’s Bay also had by far the highest number of voting documents left uncollected.
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There is a rumour flying around that in the coming weeks the government is going to raise the bus fares to make up for the massive loss the state run service is running.
What an absolute bunch of bastards! Everything was ‘positive’ up until this morning but now we’re about to see the real roadmap.
Still on the plus side, it means the government isn’t selling as many passports as it hoped it would if it has to make up the extra funds this way.
And the electricity bills are arriving on Monday too. What’s in them that needed to wait till after election day?
Who told you we, the common people, were going to benefit from the sale of passports?
@Thaddeus: a World Cup (cue mass public hysteria) is coming soon. So your theory of “coming weeks” makes sense.
I doubt it’s because of Manuel Mallia.
It was an uninspiring campaign all round so I’m not surprised that turn-out is down.
By tackling the wrong things and confusing domestic issues with European ones (not just in Malta but all around Europe), politicians are undermining the European project.
What do you mean, rumour? Bus fare increase is a cert. Pay more for less is the norm with Labour government.
I think this means another big win for PL. Even if these are all switchers, they were once PN voters who decided not to vote, leaving more PL voters.
Disillusioned switchers couldn’t face the fact that they voted poorly, and couldn’t face swallowing their words and do the right thing by voting PN. I suspect not going to vote is becoming the new’ ‘cool’.
However it’s significant that voting turnout decreased too in PL strongholds; people are not happy with PL’s way of things.
I do not share your assessment regarding the 10th district.
I think that the only way that the 2013 switchers could have redeemed themselves was to go out en masse and vote for all the PN candidates.
I am almost sure, at this moment, that very few of them have actually done that.
We will know in a few hours.
I am more inclined to hope for a good result from Gozo for the PN. Let’s wait and see.
It is not good sense to stay home in protest at being let down and not vote at all. Let’s just say that at least this time round they were not stupid enough to vote for Labour MEPs.
Expect price rises after this election. Obviously they wouldn’t raise any prices before the election. But as Marie Antoinette said about the common people “Let them eat cake”. They deserve it after all.