Robert Abela takes Labour down to worst result in party’s history

Robert Abela has made history by becoming the most unpopular Labour Party leader in the last 60 years.

Abela chose to tie Saturday’s elections with a vote of confidence in himself. Yet with the Labour Party shedding 9% of its vote, compared to the 2019 MEP elections, it hit an unprecedented low of 45.2% of all votes cast – the worst result in the last 60 years.

Labour did worse only in 1966 when PN prime minister George Borg Olivier had just gained Malta’s independence (1964) and won his second consecutive election, with Labour scoring just 43% of the vote.

Abela’s previous Labour leaders, such as Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and Alfred Sant, never managed to get their party as low as it performed in last Saturday’s vote.

Comparing statistics with the 2019 MEP elections, the most recent elections where the turnout was almost identical (73%), Labour lost 23,500 first count votes while the PN gained 10,740 votes and improved its percentage performance by 4%.

In 2019, the PN obtained its worst electoral performance since Malta’s independence.

According to the latest poll results, the PN still did not manage to take many of the votes shed by Labour.

The majority were acquired by the independent candidates, particularly Arnold Cassola, who got 12,706  votes and Norman Lowell, who performed worse than in 2019 but still garnered over 6,500 votes.

Alternattiva Demokratika’s Leader, Sandra Gauci, got 2,162 votes.