Malta has always been an island near-enough obsessed with politics. Electoral turnouts frequently exceeded 90%, placing the Maltese electorate as one of the most politically active - in terms of voting - electorates in Europe.

Yet in recent elections, that usually strong turnout has started to wane: the 2022 general election saw the lowest turnout in Malta's post-independence history with 85.6%, while the 2024 European Parliament elections were also at practically their lowest with a turnout of just 72.9%.

Abstention rates have never been higher when it comes to voting day, and the latest survey results from the State of the Nation last week continue to back up a clear pattern: that people aren't caring about politics as much as they used to.

The State of the Nation survey showed that public interest in politics has plummeted to its lowest point in five years, with just 30.8% of Maltese saying that politics is important in their lives, down from 48.3% in 2021.

At the same time, a record 33.5% now say politics means nothing to them, nearly tripling from 12.9% in 2021.

It also showed that only 27% of people say they form their views based on the positions of their preferred political party, while 41.6% explicitly reject party influence altogether. Young people aged 16 to 25 years old emerged as the most politically disengaged, with just 19.8% rating politics as highly important.

Just under three-quarters of those who participated in this survey said that they intend to vote in the next General Election (74.8%). Only 8.2% of people said they will not vote, while 17.0% are still undecided.  A turnout of that nature would be unparalleled.

All of this data begs the simple question: why aren't people caring about politics as much?

Professor Mario Thomas Vassallo is right when he told The Malta Independent on Sunday that "there is political fatigue wherever you look in Malta and a great sense of collective fatalism is growing by the day."

People are fatigued by the actions of this government: every other week seems to bring a new scandal, a new lack of accountability or transparency, a new legislative attempt to undermine one institution or another.

But more so than this, the people have lost hope in Malta's political system.

We have a Labour government with a mandate significant enough that it can effectively do what it wants, be it good or bad, without the fear of any real consequence.

We then have an opposition in the form of the Nationalist Party which should be taking advantage of the aforementioned plethora of scandals, yet somehow conspires to find a way to lose votes instead of gain them.

To add to that, it doesn't appear that there is anything resembling an organised and credible political force to counter either of these two political institutions.  ADPD, for instance, is nothing short of politically irrelevant, Arnold Cassola's Momentum is still finding its feet, and the vaunted Partit Progressiv hasn't even managed to get off the ground.

It's a recipe for disaster as far as interest in politics goes, because all of this leaves more and more people resigned to one thing: a feeling of hopelessness because they've resigned themselves to the fact that nothing will change.

When someone or some party gives people hope, then we'll see people care more about politics again.  Until then, this is a trend which is unlikely to change.