One of the measures of performance for a politician is how well he does in the polls, and even more so for the party leader who is expected to be the lead in everything in the election campaign. Bleak opinion polls play a big part in making a leader appear vulnerable. Having the party leader step down shows that the party is willing to change in response to public opinion. It shows voters that it is sensitive to their needs and is not 'stuck' in the previous ideology, which voters clearly rejected in favour of something else.
Maltese pollsters don't only ask voters how they are going to vote. They also ask questions about the popularity and trust of the major party leaders.
Within the PN, Bernard Grech, by December 2019, enjoyed a trust rating of 15.1% over Roberta Metsola (12.9%) and Adrian Delia (10.7%) as party leader.
Outside the PN and in attempting to thwart the massive support garnered by the Labour Party leader, however, by 2024, Robert Abela had a trust rating of 41.1% while Bernard Grech had 16.7%. Just a few days ago, Abela increased his trust rating to 50%, while Grech dropped dismally to 18.8%, down from 20% he enjoyed just a few months before.
The idea that party leaders are decisively important in the winning or losing of general elections is implicit in much political journalism, and it is a belief that some local political commentators have been eager to propagate.
It is very rarely true.
It is only in an extremely close-run race that the personality of the leader and the gulf between that leader's standing and the popularity of his principal opponent can make the difference between victory and defeat.
It is not even particularly uncommon for the political party of the less popular leader of the two main parties to be the one that wins the election.
While we have been noticing a decline in citizens' political trust and satisfaction with democracy, we know less about whether leader popularity is in decline and, if so, what drives this trend. Malta's major party leaders have become less popular over time. The effect of partisanship on leader popularity has weakened over time, while leader integrity traits have become more important.
Leader popularity and trust rating refer to the degree to which leaders are liked and trusted by the public. A similar concept, likeability, captures this idea at the individual level. The popularity of leaders is normally supposed to form one component of the overall concept of political support.
It could reasonably be presumed that voters put their trust in party leaders based on their integrity, competence, effectiveness, reliability and warmth. Still, we can't be certain, as none of the frequent surveys have disclosed what credentials and criteria the resulting trust and popularity ratings were based on.
A significant amount of attention is given to opinion polls measuring the popularity of party leaders. The implication of much of this coverage is that the approval of party leaders matters when voters cast their votes. But what evidence is there to suggest that the popularity of party leaders is consequential for election outcomes?
Leader approval ratings are much more volatile than general election vote shares, and focusing solely on party leader's approval may possibly lead to overly pessimistic predictions for mainstream parties, and particularly for the PN.
The more relevant question, however, is whether any of this matters in terms of election outcomes. Does the (dis)approval of a party leader have any association with the share of the vote that a party receives?
There is ostensibly some kind of a relationship, but it can turn out to be not terribly strong. The main point is simple: party leaders' approval ratings fluctuate much more dramatically than parties' vote shares. Just because a party leader has become drastically unpopular, this does not mean that the party will lose a drastic number of votes at the election.
The regular surveys being churned out by local media often ask voters to indicate a preference between different potential leaders of a party or ask how a change in leadership would change how they vote. These polls can give some indication of relative popularity, but they don't tell you much about how the political climate would change if leaders change.
Leadership changes usually do produce shifts in polling, but it is often fleeting.
Of course, a strong leader could achieve success by building a strong party organisation, improving the party's brand and offering a plausible policy platform. All these might be sustainable and so offer long-term advantages to the party.
Joseph Muscat was undoubtedly a strong leader; his influence on the Labour Party was near-complete. He dominated the party organisation, party policy and its electoral strategy. Under Muscat, Labour got its best ever electoral results, and he broadened Labour's base to make it attractive to high-class support that had traditionally only voted PN.
Both Labour and the PN rarely dump their leaders because the alternative to even a bleak status quo is much riskier. True, the PN have removed leaders slightly more often, but only because in those instances they calculated that an internal coup was unambiguously in their party's interests.
Perhaps rather than removing its leader, a high-risk, destabilising move that would not improve its electoral prospects, the PN should be worrying more about its paucity of heavyweight candidates.
Dr. Mark Said is a lawyer