The Maltese political landscape has been the focus of quiet but significant upheavals during the past months and years, ranging from the PN referendum and general election victories, to the spectacular slump in the PN’s electoral support at the Euro-Parliamentary election one year later. The PN continued to be at the wrong end of the count at all subsequent local elections.

This shift of support calls for an explanation and, more so, for a clear understanding of its root causes.

Was it a shift of support with the potential of building up into a sustained wave? Was it a Mediterranean aberration, expressing a temporary disenchantment with the performance of the PN? Or has the PN recouped the lost ground?

Is the electorate showing signs of maturity and a disposition “to do its own thing”, rather than abide by the discipline imposed by the political party machines?

These and other questions deserve close analysis. They arise from the incontestable fact that a significantly large segment of the Maltese electorate has consciously taken over the middle ground of politics.

Will it remain a silent majority? Or will it solidify and impose its terms?

Conventional wisdom

Conventional wisdom associates the concept of the floating vote with this category of voters.

Huge amounts of energy are being invested in identifying the voters concerned, in order to appeal to their propensities. Conventional assumptions are of little help in this regard. The more one thinks about it, the segment of the electorate that will tilt the scales, one way or the other, looks like the elusive Pimpernel or like the abominable snowman, whose description is left to the imagination.

Some think that the core of the floating vote is “the middle class”. Others are inclined to think that it is composed of citizens with “middle incomes”. These, of course, are not the same.

Many working class people earn incomes above the middle. An unemployed middle-class employee does not. There are different perceptions of the term “middle class”. Some people think that middle class citizens are found in the bracket above the hoi polloi.

Others take the view that the term applies to citizens who are neither rich nor poor. Others still, think that the “class” concept is evaporating, and that upwardly mobile citizens with improved spending power seek to satisfy their aspirations with greater determination than the underdog class of citizens.

The conclusion seems to be that the crude class-driven model on how people vote, however it is measured, is no longer plausible. It is becoming increasingly difficult to target specific classes of voters.

There is an increasing appeal to duty and civic virtue, to citizens’ rights, and so on.

Changed circumstances

There is method in this logic. After all, new social and environment concepts are gaining ground on both sides of the dividing line.

The ruling government has been in office for a long time and has been showing signs of fatigue. Taxation has pinched rich and poor alike, and the bureaucracy has proved to be inept and often incapable of rising to the occasion – thereby antagonising swathes of voters who went so far as to stage street protests.

Many people have been set back, with many families getting nearer to the poverty line, although the banners of solidarity fly prominently on the battlements of all the political parties.

All the political parties champion the cause of the workers. So who are the voters who will determine when and how the pendulum will swing the next time round?

The young vote, particularly those voters who will be voting for the first time, are a Pandora’s Box.

Young voters are generally uninhibited by bad dreams about the Mintoff years. They are far more interested in the future and, in any case, most of them are not inclined to concentrate their minds too much on politics between now and polling time. They need to be wooed – and so they will be.

Which is the sector that is likely to “float”? Labour will have the task of persuading floating voters that it will not raid their pockets nor will it trample on their civic and human rights. The PN, on the other hand, will be encumbered with the task of explaining away its past inadequacies and shortcomings in office before offering its own menu.

Likely strategy

In a society where traditional class loyalties are dissolving, targeting specific social groups will not work by itself. The strategy most likely to succeed is that which will persuade “floating” voters to identify their interests and vote accordingly.

This is likely to be the battleground. Electors will look back and assess whether or not the process of upward mobility has been arrested, whether their family’s or their children’s prospects are brighter or drearier, whether, in short, their aspirations have been frustrated and whether they have been “let down”.

The contemporary political scenario is fascinating because a sizable chunk of the Maltese electorate seems to have been weaned from the domination of the party political machines that prevailed some years ago.

The average floating voter is not mesmerised.

Very many citizens have tested the political waters by standing for local government office and a number of them will contest the next national elections.

These and related developments have persuaded the parties represented in parliament to compete in the middle ground, where the voter is calling the shots.

Issue of credibility

Today’s young generation is not prepared to be led by the nose. It is inquisitive. It insists on being persuaded. It is disposed to be rebellious if it feels hard done by.

Young voters who will vote for the first time or, at best, for the second time, have no experience of the performance of preceding administrations. This young generation must be wooed, and somehow activated, not by regimentation and resort to old methods. Novel approaches will be made, relying on reason and gentle persuasion on new forms of participation, on the appeal for solidarity, on co-partnership, on communitarian initiative that is distinct from collectivism or state direction, on the environment and its protection and, most of all, on the realities with which they have had to contend during the most recent years.

While some politicians may desperately desire to present a new image to the electorate, they must also convince voters that they are not beholden to wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Next time around, the political parties will be fielding a number of new faces and will be concentrating their appeal on the younger vote and on the older floating voters. More than any other time, they cannot afford to zigzag and play ducks and drakes with the basic values that distinguish them from their competitors.

Hence, the tightrope walking on such issues as the family, divorce and single-mothers, gay rights, pensions and social solidarity, student issues, hunting and environmental concerns will come into play and call for identification.

Who is likely to be more credible and more convincing? Those who will opt to walk the tightrope, or those who will stand on the rock-bed of their principles? Those who have been unequal to their past promises, or those who propose practical solutions that conform with electoral aspirations?

Time will tell.

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