Analysis: Two surveys telling the same story

The surveys published on Sunday by The Malta Independent and Maltatoday tell similar stories with one conclusion: Muscat’s government is in a strong position and has the potential to be stronger in 2 years time while Busuttil’s party has gained next to nothing in three years.

Joseph Muscat is in a stronger position – both in trust and party lead – than he was this time around when he was opposition leader facing Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi.

This is why:

The Malta Independent

survey says that if an election were to be held today, Labour would win with a majority of 10,000 votes. The “obvious” conclusion for Daphne’s Independent is that 25,000 votes “evaporated”. My foot!

Let there be no mistake about it. Any party winning with a 10,000 majority before 2013 was considered as winning by a landslide a “

tkaxkira papali”

.

The Malta Independent survey however has been releasing its survey results over 10 days. Last Sunday’s results said that Muscat leads Busuttil in the trust barometer by a staggering 9.7%.

If 3.3% is 10,000 votes. 9.7% would be very close to 30,000 votes.

There are also those who at the time of answering the phone survey were still undecided. If the trend is correct (and there is no reason to believe otherwise), the 17.2% of undecided voters will sway towards the most trusted leader. That would leave us with a result similar to 2013.

The

Maltatoday

survey is somewhat more conservative and gives a slightly softer lead to Muscat and Labour. But the trends in both surveys are consistent and point towards Muscat, leaving Busuttil weaker than Gonzi was in 2011.

Muscat’s lead over Busuttil is a straight 7% while Labour leads PN by 2.1%.

There is one very important fact in MT’s survey which might have gone unnoticed for those who got lost in numbers and letters.

Muscat enjoys a two-digit 16.6% lead in trust over Busuttil among the most important category of all:

The switchers

. Muscat’s lead among this category of voters is twice as much over Busuttil, with 33.3% of switchers trusting Muscat while only 16.7% trust Busuttil more.

In his analysis, Maltatoday’s James Debono sums it all up in this paragraph:

“Labour has greater room to grow among the larger percentage of respondents who trust Muscat more than Busuttil, than PN does among those who trust Busuttil more than Muscat.”

All this goes to show that more than half way through the legislature, Busuttil made no gains and is in a weaker position than Gonzi was two years before a general election. His hardline ‘corruption, corruption, corruption’ crap is not reaping any results for his party.

At the same time, Muscat is starting to feel the pinch of three years of tough decisions and making a number of own goals but his leadership and positive results far outweigh his negatives.

The picture is pretty bleak for Busuttil and his negative brand of politics. If I were in PN’s position I would seriously be thinking of shouting out loud in Busuttil’s face

#BARRA