Labour in March 2008 – 141,888 votes/Labour in June 2009 – 135,917 votes
I love it
Joseph Muscat is thrilled at the fact that his party polled 55% of the vote in these elections. I’m not surprised. Telling your supporters that you’ve won with a landslide of 55% sounds a lot better than telling them that you’ve polled fewer votes than Sant’s party last year.
In real terms, there have been no gains for Labour, but only lost votes and abstentions. That’s not much of an earthquake, nor is it, as Muscat said excitably yesterday “the birth of a political movement never before seen in the Maltese and Gozitan Islands” (I quote Maltastar).
The Nationalist Party will be reluctant to point this out, on the grounds that its losses were far worse. This is both defeatist and short-sighted. Right across Europe, the governing parties have taken a hammering in these elections. EP elections, like local council elections, are the sort in which you send messages and tell the government where to stick it.
It’s a different kettle of fish when you’re the opposition party and people are that much more likely to vote for you in an EP election than they are for the governing party, against whom they wish in large numbers to protest.
The Nationalist Party fared worse in the EP elections of 2004 than it did this time.
Let’s put it this way. Muscat has run a relentless campaign telling those who voted Nationalist in the general election to vote Labour this time in protest. He has worked like the blazes to bring out the Labour vote. He has met people, talked about coalitions, run back and forth. His voter-base should be in hyper-militant mode after two decades in opposition and another four years to go. He fought this just like a general election, on general election issues.
And yet Muscat in this election polled 135,917 votes, when Sant’s party polled 141,888 in the general election last year.
Yes, there’s an overwhelming message here for the Nationalist Party. But there’s one for Muscat and his earthquake, too. The sooner his people stop focusing on that 55% and start counting heads instead, the better.
“The Maltese and Gozitan population had one clear choice between the party of yesterday, and the movement of tomorrow,” Muscat told the hyper-ventilating crowd yesterday. The strange thing is, I’m not quite sure which is which. If, as Muscat said too, the Labour Party is now “a movement which gathers all within it, and one which sees across party boundaries, ignoring if one has red or blue affiliations….a collation of people united in their readiness to bring about change in the country”, then what exactly happened to all those people who voted Labour last year? If they have been replaced in this election by members of the new coalition that doesn’t see red or blue, then where have they gone? Sant didn’t have a new coalition last year, and he still polled more votes than Muscat. It would be interesting to see what really happened here.
“They told us that this day would never come, but here it is,” Muscat said. Unfortunately, the day hasn’t arrived. If Muscat has acquired votes from the Nationalist Party and AD in this election – and he has – then where did the Labour votes which they displaced move to exactly? Were they sitting at home, very cross and fed up? There’s so much to be looked at.
“The population of Malta and Gozo has sent a strong and clear message to Lawrence Gonzi. They have told him that everyone has had enough of being taken for a ride, and that this will not be tolerated any longer,” Muscat said, and again I quote Maltastar.
There’s an equally strong message for Labour, and both political parties need to sharpen up and read it.
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@ daphne
Why (contrary to your previous articles) compare the general election (results) with MEP election (results)?
[Daphne – I’m using Muscat’s own yardstick to measure his result.]
I am loving the way you are bending over backwards to try and justify the result.
Get a life.
[Daphne – Hohum. Why would I want to try and justify the result? I’ve known about it for the last few weeks. I believe I’ve raised some important issues which your party might want to look at. If you have, as is claimed, brought in new votes that previously went to AD and the Nationalists, then were did large parts of the Labour core vote last year go in this election, given that Labour polled around 6,000 votes fewer despite the new coalition? Did they abstain, and if so, why?]
Way too simplistic coming from a woman with brains. What do you think?
[Daphne – It’s not simplistic at all. Numbers are numbers. Campaigns are what they are. In a general election you look at the percentage, because that’s what gives you the government – or doesn’t. But in an EP election the percentage is wholly irrelevant for internal strategy-building, though useful for public marketing and morale-boosting. For the purposes of strategy, Labour has to ignore the percentage and count those heads. If, despite pulling out all the stops in this election, it managed to bring in fewer heads than in the general election last year, this means that it didn’t pull in its full core vote. You also have to factor in that in the last general election, tranches of the Labour core vote abstained. In this election, Labour attracted lots of protest votes that would ordinarily have gone to other parties – or so it at first appears. If you add these to the mix, this means that even more of the Labour core vote stayed away, with the protest votes making up the numbers. This is important information which the Labour Party can’t ignore, and I don’t imagine that it will. It has made no gains in real terms, and if you factor in the protest votes that might very well migrate back where they came from in a general election, it may even have made some losses. Of course, the governing party’s losses are more severe, but then with the governing party they always are, and the opposition party has a natural advantage. This, too, has to be factored in. I am simplistic only because I am writing. This is no place to bring out a calculator, though I am quite sure Edward Scicluna is using his. He won’t be making the results of his assessment public, I imagine.]
Daphne – “right across Europe the governing parties have taken a battering” .Not quite , In Germany , France and Italy the parties in government have performed very well and outstripped the opposition:
Germany CDU/CSU 42 seats versus SPD 23 seats
France UMP 30 seats versus socialists 22 seats
Italy PdL/ AN 37 seats versus PD 22 seats
(actually in Germany SPD is in the grand coalition govt)
The total seats for the EPP-ED (European People’s party )is 267 versus the socialists 159 seats. In fact while the EPP maintained its share at 36% , the socialists dropped 6 % to 21.6%.
In my view, in Malta, till now our economy has not taken such a battering, and many voters feel disgruntled about less important issues as their water/electricity bills, Vat registration on cars etc.
However PN still comes across as being arrogant, the unfortunate comment by Prime Minister Gonzi that the issue people were most concerned about was the official picture of the new president.
Important issues like hospital waiting lists, transport reform/roads , MEPA , a complete rethink on tourism, need to be resolved, and then PN may have a fighting chance in 2013.
Slightly off-topic and I don’t mean to dwell in the past but as I was travelling back to Malta last Thursday evening, the only newspaper on board (due to some silly industrial action) was Malta Today. Here’s an excerpt from its Election Special entitled – A rare glimpse of statesmanship…..
“Joseph Muscat admitted that he himself hails from a “mixed” family that votes both Labour and Nationalist, but he chose to militate within the PL for the reason that he believed in the “progressive” ideas that, during the 1970s and the 1980s, put Malta a notch ahead of other European states.”
A notch ahead ey. I wonder in which sector this was. Perhaps in political violence, or was it in freedom in speech? Then I stopped to think some more. Yes, it must have been our capability in the global supply of local toothpaste and chocolate. Not really – we had rigid policies of bulk-buying and wage freezes then. I also thought about the tranquil business, political and social relationships the “progressive” Labour government that inspired Muscat so much had nationwide. Without a doubt, the strikes of ’77 came to mind – doctors, bakers, bankers, teachers – the list is endless, not to mention the trouble with the church.
I just can’t stand it that Muscat thinks everyone’s this daft, naive and gullible.
Give the poor boy a chance . . . he was still in daipers back then . . . albeit probably rather dodgy ones manufactured in North Korea.
PN in March 2008: 143,468 votes
PN in June 2009: 100,486 votes
[Daphne – Yes, but they’re in government. Hence, PN in 2004 EP elections: 39% of the vote. PN in 2008 general elections: in government.]
you’re even jelous of scicluna?
i mean you might be smart but never enough to be a professor lol
[Daphne – Sigh.]
Why do so many people use defective keyboards?
Scicluna isn’t that smart. I’m smarter.
Don’t be too sure . . . if some of the plodders that hold a chair are anything to go by, it should be a piece of cake to make a professor of our Daphne . . . !
I thought that up to yesterday, you were stating that there is no relation between the results of the EP election and the general election.
[Daphne – There isn’t. I am examining Muscat’s claim of victory and his brandishing of a percentage which is relatively meaningless in EP electoral terms. To claim real success, you need a head count. A head count which results in fewer votes than were polled last year, despite all the stops that were pulled out and the claims of new votes from other parties, is worrying for a new leader.]
I see that consistency is not your forte. I remember when you used to write that you don’t give a hoot about EP elections.
[Daphne – I don’t. It’s business as usual today. If it were a general election, that wouldn’t be the case.]
Indeed, using the same line of thought given in the title to this contribution, it should be noted that PN polled 143,468 in March 2008, whereas on Saturday their first preference vote was a mere 100,486. Where is the calculator? Sant ran away with it.
[Daphne – I repeat: the Nationalists are in government. It is governments which attract protest votes – which obviously go to the other parties. The most an opposition party will have to deal with is abstentions, and Labour had a significant quantity of them.]
Essentially, both parties need to do a deep self cross-examination. Your focus in this blog is predominantly on PL. That is fair enough. If I was within the PL ranks (thank goodness I’m not and will never be), I would thank you for your free advice.
Cheers
[Daphne – I think it is you who are inconsistent, saying that you will never support Labour, but then quite obviously deriving pleasure from this weekend’s result. Still, it takes all sorts.]
Maybe because I am neither here nor there. This is an EP election and as long as the best candidates are elected from both sides, I am pretty much indifferent to any other interpretation of the result. Four years is an eternity in political terms.
We needed to elect the best candidates, I hope we did although that is yet to be seen. For me it is end of story.
This blog is still very entertaining though!
marks – sigh , yawn. Prof Scicluna may turn out to be another Prof Josef Bonnici, who as minister for government entities just left a blood-bath of losses in every single enterprise.
Or a Prof Romano Prodi who as PM of Italy, cancelled important infrastructure projects and shut down Italy’s nuclear power stations.
So much for being a professor.
Dear Daphne,
What about the 118,983 who voted PL in the last MEP election and the 135,917 the party got in this election? An increase of nearly 17, 000 votes!!
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election,_2004_(Malta)#Results )
18,000 people didn’ t go out to vote .. OBVIOUSLY not all of them were PN supporters.. BUT IMAGINE IF THEY WERE.. the margin would have still been 17, 000! I don’t know if this a coincidence or not! …
… Come on Daphne… Be a lady and accept the fact that PN is on the wrong track @ the moment..
The people spoke.. it’ s up to the gov. to listen now!!!
[Daphne – You’d be surprised to know that I look at situations very clinically. And if you read my piece again, you will see that I said quite clearly that this is a severe message to the government. However, it is also a message to the Labour Party. You cannot extrapolate from Labour’s votes in the 2004 election. The party was then led by the extremely anti-EU Sant, and was still going on about partnership. Labour voters had only the previous year voted to keep Malta out of the European Union. It is amazing that the party managed to get so many people to the polls in the first place. The situation this time round was very different. Please note that I am not saying this to justify anything, but because numbers and voting patterns are a particular interest of mine. I hive this interest off from my support for one particular party, and the better politicians and all strategists do the same.]
It is good to mention anti-EU Sant .. in fact I think that AD got so many votes in the last MEP elections & not as much in this one because in 2004 there were Labour supporters who preferred voting for AD rather than Sant’s party.
Today, I believe that these voters add up to those who voted PL.. resulting in such a disappointing result for AD.
[Daphne – Most of those who voted AD in 2004 had voted PN in the general election the previous year. Some of them came from Labour backgrounds, as you say, but more were habitual PN voters.]
Corinne, since they are PL supporters they probably bought the same type of PC like those at the red glass house. Hence they are apt to mulfunction. QED
[Daphne – I think it is you who are inconsistent, saying that you will never support Labour, but then quite obviously deriving pleasure from this weekend’s result. Still, it takes all sorts.]
Not supporting labour does not preclude enjoying the fact that other parties got pummelled.
[Daphne – I know. I believe it’s called hdura/lanzit in Maltese, and Schadenfreude in German.]
Elio, if you get your enjoyment from a political party getting pummelled in an MEP election, then you really need to get a life. I hope you didn’t find it sexually gratifying too.
I’m still convinced that you can’t compare EP elections with the general election. In general elections 93% will vote but in EP elections 75% voted, how can you compare? Whatever you say some people don’t bother to vote who will represent them in Brussels because they feel it’s irrelevant to their lives and many of these are traditional Labour voters.
[Daphne – By the same token, many of those who voted Labour in this election would have done so because it is irrelevant to their lives, but a good way of getting a message across to the party they voted for in the general election.]
In 2004 the Pl got 119,000 note, now they got 135,000 votes so don’t you think you’re way off target here. Either way you look at the results even the blind will see that Labour has made inroads into sectors of the society that till now where alien to it.
[Daphne – I am not saying that Labour hasn’t pulled votes from the Nationalist Party. The survey results have been showing that for some time (and yet the Nationalist Party increased its vote marginally over 2004). It does not follow that these people want Labour to run the country. The Times’ leading article describes the situation well. The sentiment is very similar to what it was in 1996 – I would say it is identical – except that this is not a general election.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090608/opinion/editorial ]
It must be in the genes….anyone remember football fans going out on carcades because the rival team lost to a third team?
However in this case I don’t think it’s only “Schadenfreude”…that would be too easy….and simplistic.
At one point, last night, you noted that the PL only needs to take AD votes to win a general election.
You also need to factor in that by 2013, many of last year’s voters will have passed away, and there will be several thousand first-time voters on the list. This demographic change on its own could be enough to wipe out the PN’s advantage (or make it bigger, as the case may be).
I think both parties are well aware that last year’s election was effectively a draw in polling terms.
The results of the election were due to largely national issues but if we want to look at them from a European perspective, they fall in line with the general advance of right-wing parties. I’m quite sure that the PL would have got most of Lowell’s 3000 votes had he been barred from contesting, with the rest going to AN.
I don’t want to dampen anyone’s celebrations, but, er, three Labour seats to two PN seats is what we’ve had for the last five years. So, erm, not to put too fine a point on it, but isn’t this called ‘no change at all’, and if so, why wasn’t there an earthquake in 2004?
[Daphne – The seats have become an irrelevance. It’s the voting patterns that are being looked at.]
Easy.
2004: 50% MLP, 40% PN, others: floaters (i.e. AD in 2004) = 10% (=5% among PN supporters, and the floaters)
2009: PN = 40%
Floaters have switched from AD to MLP, making it 50%+5%=55%
Rightwing PN supporters + protest voters = the missing 5%
66 people who voted Busuttil voted also N Lowell! Have they gone crazy?
@ Daphne ….
EP elec 2004
pl got 119K
pn got 98K
EP elec 2009 ( about 2K more voters vs elec 2004)
pl got 135K
pn got 100K
the 13% growth for pl is obvious. pn is at status quo. how do yu explain this? thanks.
[Daphne – Labour was 15,000 votes away from its previous year’s general election tally in the 2004 EP elections. It was 6,000 votes away from its general election tally in this EP election, on a turn-out lower than three per cent. In certain districts, Labour’s tally was just a couple of hundred votes away from its general election tally last year, and on a lower turn-out. This means that a significant number of those who voted PN last year voted Labour in this EP election. The real mystery to me is how the Nationalists held on to that 40%. In 2004 they were triumphant and fresh into Europe, so you would have thought it would be a lot worse now, and quite frankly it almost was – around 35% before the start of the campaign.]
New doubts on destination of sixth seat in EP elections:
It seems after all that NP will not get the 6th seat.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090608/local/new-doubts-on-destination-of-sixth-seat-in-ep-elections
‘Right across Europe, the governing parties have taken a hammering in these elections’
I don’t agree Daphne. Although many suspected that this would happen, it only happened in a handful of countries like Britain, Spain, Hungary and Latvia where the economic situation is really bad (much worse than that of Malta). On the whole, most of the governing parties, like those of Poland, Germany, France, Italy and more, enjoyed victories. I must also add, that the right emerged as the big winner while the left suffered huge losses.
I think the Nationalists would be fools if they don’t analise the elections across the EU better. For one thing, they should stop saying that the European governing parties have taken a hammering, especially since many right wing governing parties emerged as the winners!
Why is everyone amazed at this election being compared to a general election? We have people who actually have the gall to start screaming for a general election now because they claim to have the majority. So yes, it’s right to count heads and remind the Labour Party that no one is rushing over to vote Labour.
People are just not ‘loving’ the current government and would like to express it in a safe way. The governing party is and can never be popular but a quick head count definitely shows that Labour are not really the party people are hoping will be their new government.
The Maltese people wish they had an alternative to the PN but at the moment we definitely do not. Carcades come cheap but if people only think – seeing them, don’t you just wish that won’t happen in a general election?
Daphne,
Joseph Muscat has many reasons to be thrilled. While your analysis is correct you are being clinical on one aspect of the campaign. What matters is the first count votes LP got relative to the first count votes of the PN. This amounts to a whopping 35,431 difference. The turnout was 78.8% – I don’t imagine the turnout for the next election to be more than 10% more than this figure ie around 89%. Even if you took 10% of the eligible voters who will bother next time round to vote and cast a blue dye on every single one of them you would only net in an extra 32,246 votes for PN – still not enough to reach the whopping 35,431. As things stand PL have an insurmountable majority over PN.
[Daphne – Do you remember the whopping win of 1992, followed by the whopping loss of 1996? Four years are an eternity. The guiding principle should now be ‘mohhok hemm’.]
It was the worst PN campaign ever – you don’t place work as the central theme of your campaign in the middle of a recession (I had pointed this out weeks ago). I can only think of Mugabe having a campaign based on food supplies as being more foolish. Some of the new faces at Dar Centrali may need to make way for more competent people.
The PM should consider introducing policies which will win the young voters – eg divorce. It’s a pity that in the first twelve months of this legislature PM Gonzi far from being out of control took historical decisions long in coming – the shipyards were privatised, the rent laws are to be amended and the opera house is to be rebuilt. It is also a pity that those who worked so hard to keep us out of the EU have been rewarded.
Corinne, I’m not doubting your intelligence, but every time you don’t agree with a post.,you allways ‘tira in ballo’ the grammar.
Mhux xorta kull hadd fehem,nghid jien?
Strangely enough,you mentioned nothing on ‘pjacieri’ instead ‘pjaciri’ on the post. “Ejja,go & vote” maybe(I said maybe) that’s why the post was removed.
Hadd ma hu perfett, imma nemmen li hawn nies anqas perfetti min ohrajn, u jiena zgur wiehed minnhom
What are you on about? It sounds like you need a nice long rest.
The usual out of context reply, insulting in a very dainty manner.
As a matter of fact I enjoy my siesta daily.
Daphne, I still think that EP2009 and GE2008 should never be compared, but these numbers cannot be ignored. If they are the same voters, then that only means that the PN protest vote is enormous – and was expressed in various ways: abstain from voting or vote AD IE AN Libertas or Emy.
District PL votes PL votes
EP 2009 GE 2008
1 10183 10688
2 13891 14847
3 13736 14237
4 12729 13508
5 12986 13571
6 11516 12090
7 11222 11528
8 8989 9309
9 7849 7928
10 7099 7390
11 7972 8209
12 8297 8398
13 9448 10185
Total 135917 141888
[Daphne – Nobody is ignoring them. The fact that Labour polled close to its general election totals, when taken on a district by district basis, and on a much lower turn-out, means that significant numbers of people who voted PN last year voted Labour in this election, while numbers of those who voted Labour last year stayed home, as did many of those who had voted PN. The result is not different to that of 2004, except then the anti-PN vote was split between Labour and AD and was actually higher at 58%, but on a higher turn-out of 82%. The PN total then was just over 39%. It’s important to keep things in perspective. The psychological upset now is because the votes went to Labour, rather than being split between Labour and AD, and this gives Labour the chance to boast of victory. However, it is important to remember that if you are going to see this in general election terms, 2004’s totals of 39% PN, 48% Labour and 9% AD would also have meant a ‘Labour government’ – and that was Sant. In fact it was a major consideration in last year’s election that this would happen. If AD had been successful in its campaign for votes among those who had voted for it in the EP elections, we would have had Sant as prime minister today and Joseph Muscat would be an EP candidate today.
The main point that really needs to be discussed is whether, in 2004, those 9% voted AD positively, for fun, to reward them for having missed their vote in the previous year’s election, or out of anger at the government. I think it was less out of anger at the government, and more of the other things. When people want to teach the government a lesson, they vote Labour and not AD.]