This time two, not one, opinion polls published on the same day.

The message they relay is one and the same: the coming European Parliament election and the concurrent local council elections will see the heaviest defeat inflicted on the Nationalist Party, or what remains of it.

Labour is 15 points ahead of the Nationalist Party. Actually, the party registered a slight recovery from February but then its leader, Adrian Delia, fared worse, far worse. His trust rating dropped to 15.9% from 20.4% last month.

It can’t get clearer than that. And this despite all the effort Delia has put in, the walkabouts he undertakes on a daily basis. Like the one he did at Sliema yesterday. The pictures show smiling faces, admiring even, as Delia pumps hands and speaks to one and all.

Clearly though, at least going by the surveys, this is not enough. He has not established himself as a potential prime minister.

And it does not look as if he is being pulled down by those who from the beginning were against him. Those in opposition are a very tiny minority. But the distrust that comes through survey after survey is wider than that.

He is not breaking through. And there are just 83 days to go before EP poll day.

It is true that Delia keeps saying his real target is the 2022 general election but one doubts if he can retain his post after a heavy loss.

According to Franco Debono, all talk inside the party (presumably by those in opposition to Delia who cannot make their voice heard) is all focused on ‘After May’.

This may be true and it may not. Whatever happens, the party appears split and broken. Yesterday’s polls show the party retains, if at all, the support of its inner core. Those who have been voting PN election after election, regardless of the party’s programme or manifesto.

This support, the polls tell us, has risen from 24% to 27.3% in a month. This is still below what is considered to be the PN core vote. And herewith the contradiction: the party has risen (slightly) while doing pretty much nothing while its leader, who is doing all the running, keeps slithering down to unheard of depths.

Delia’s trust rating dropped to 15.9% from 20.4% last month as he trails Joseph Muscat by such a wide margin across all age groups, regions and both male and female voters.

It is the PN party delegates who put Delia in there as a leader by a huge majority (and some slick moves). Only they can remove him and the numbers suggest that some of them at least are having second thoughts.

Maybe it was the wrong tactic to put the choice of the party leader in the hands of the party delegates, in other words, the party grass roots. The party now has to come to terms with this decision and find its way forward.