The recent political surveys place the Labour Party firmly ahead of the Nationalist Party.

Despite the many, many proposals that the PN has been putting forward to the public, it still lags by quite a bit behind.

The question is why?

There are a number of possible reasons. Firstly, a section of PN supporters who backed Adrian Delia might not want to vote for the person who deposed him, so if Delia is not in their district, they might not vote.

While Grech has been trying to bridge the gap between the two sides internally, some of Delia’s supporters still hold a grudge over the way he was removed from leadership.

Secondly, the government navigated the Covid pandemic well. This elevated trust in its leadership capabilities.

Thirdly, the government recently issued its budget proposals for next year and, overall, they were good. This, especially for pensioners and first-time buyers.

A survey by statistician Vince Marmara shows that if an election were to be held today, the Labour Party would have a 46,000 majority.

 A survey by MaltaToday showed the same, but did have some good news for the PN. “Support for the Labour Party remains unchanged at 43.3% but the Nationalist Party climbs by almost three points to 29.8%, in the November survey.” So the PN might be making some very slow headway.

The PN has also been making a push to introduce new faces to the party, but perhaps these are not front and centre enough.

It has also ramped up its PR campaign, holding many press conferences about a variety of topics each day. But the vote difference is still huge. The party needs to find a way to connect with the people more. It feels as though it is in election mode already, and one questions whether it would be able to keep this up until the actual election takes place.

The Labour Party, in 2020, made the right choice when replacing Muscat as in the eyes of many, a new government was formed. While that is true to a certain extent however, the new government has made some mistakes already, such as by not taking any action against a certain minister.

It needs to be careful here as, with all the filth uncovered from the previous administration, it would not take much for it to become buried again. Indeed the economic implications Malta’s bad reputation are only starting to be felt.

An election will not be taking place this year and while it is highly unlikely that the PN would be able to beat the PL, it has an opportunity for the party to close the gap. It cannot afford to make any mistakes and needs to figure out how to really attract voters.