You are right, but I will not stand in judgement. Luckily, I did not have parents who put pressure on me not to do what I wanted to do. This does not mean that I was pampered, but that we had mutual respect in the family.

How one voted is wholly self-reported, and this means, that the arguments for the Switchers switched back and that jobs-for-votes was the cause of a PL win are rather weak, because self-reporting isn’t exactly a reliable source of information. And both switchers and people promised jobs have all the motivation to lie about how they voted.

The caption to that poster was “L-ghazla f’idejk, titlifiex”

I agree with you, but that’s just a sub-set and not the whole.

Nowadays not even the term ‘nuclear family’ is appropriate. Nowadays we have a sizable number of ‘family’ units made up of a single member. Living independently, yet connected through social media and gathering places or waterholes.

This to my mind makes for more emphasis on the personal benefit than on the common good. And I think they are those who make up the majority of ‘switchers’.

Their ‘family’ is made up of those in their social media circle and ‘drinking holes ‘frequenters and not their biological family.

And they switch or not according to what they perceive to be beneficial to their group.

Political parties ignore this group at their peril.

No, I don’t agree with him. His explanation is too simplistic and ignores the historic context. The record of past general elections over the last 45 years shows you that the Maltese electorate has always been chomping at the bit to vote Labour and that it sets the bar far lower for Labour than it does for the Nationalists because it favours Labour but tolerates the Nationalists as the default party when Labour, even with the bar set really low, becomes intolerable.

This explains the low margin of victory for the Nationalists even when performing at their best and against ghastly Labour leaders with a very low performance level. Mintoff, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, Alfred Sant – it seemed inevitable to me that the minute Labour got itself a leader who seemed (emphasis on seemed) normal, it would break through that barrier. And that’s exactly what it has done.

It’s just a numbers game.

Mark Anthony Falzon is a pretty astute fellow and you have been in agreement with him in the past, so I was wondering where you think his analysis went wrong or if anything he said will make you reassess your own thoughts about the election.

I found Manuel Delia’s analysis to be very convincing and your comments about demography most insightful but a difference of 36,000 votes is huge so I am wondering whether Mr Delia and yourself missed something. It never crossed my mind that I was asking you to “pick a fight”.