Elections have consequences beyond their immediate results, mainly in terms of the strategic lessons that are drawn from them by the leaders of the two major parties and the news media.
Hard-core conservatives will claim any PN gains this year as final, definitive proof of their longstanding argument that only rigorous, consistent conservatism can create a Nationalist electoral majority.
Progressives will argue that Labour needs to move to the left (or at least move to a "populist" ideology and message) to win, emulating tactics abroad.
Many people in politics use election results not to enlighten themselves and others, but to grind old axes. Separating real from disingenuous post-election arguments will be an essential task for the reality-minded in both parties.
There was something strange leading up to this electoral campaign. Regular surveys and polls kept providing a picture of a shifting electorate. All that shifting around reveals something. This is not a deeply divided electorate. It is not two intensely committed armed camps fighting over an ever-growing pool of undecided voters in battleground districts.
The voters do not seem deeply engaged in this campaign. There's no great overriding issue roiling the voters.
The indifferent electorate will remain. Deciding not to vote has become a common stance in Malta.
There are those who are sceptical, seeing voting as useless. Then there are those who stand on principle, finding it difficult to vote in good conscience because candidates aren't quite up to snuff. Still, other people choose not to vote because news and politics are not of interest to them.
Political scientists and forward-looking politicians will be debating the ultimate impact of the two youngest Maltese generations: Gen Z and Millenials. Younger voters should be a source of electoral strength for both main parties and even the other peripheral ones.
In each of these two younger generations, different responses to major political issues during their school years can be seen. Millennials wielded their power by using new forms of social and digital media to shed light on societal problems. Gen Z acts on fixing them.
Maltese appear to think not much is at stake in this election, so it doesn't make a whole lot of difference who gets elected. The actual pool of floating voters isn't the percentage of those who remain undecided. They show little interest in or involvement in the campaign. The real prize is the percentage of people who say they now support a candidate but could change their minds. They are two-minded voters. They could vote for either candidate. One day they'll be for Robert Abela. Then he says something strange, and they switch to Alex Borg. Then Borg embellishes the facts, and they go back to Abela.
When no big issues are driving the vote, small differences take on more importance.
Yet, as always, Maltese politics is a waiting game come election time. Waiting to see if Labour's large but not wholly convincing poll lead will crumble and whether the PN and other minor parties will take advantage. And above all, waiting for the general election and what sort of government comes afterwards.
These are the current preoccupations of many journalists, politicians and party strategists, and of those voters who pay regular attention to politics. Yet there is also another form of waiting going on in our country and beyond, which is less conscious and focused but more profound. People are waiting to see if the form of politics that both main parties have been following since the mid-80s, with only a few significant interruptions, is about to be replaced by one better equipped to deal with the various crises in which Malta finds itself.
Undoubtedly, for all parties contesting, the support of swing voters must be secured at all costs. In this scenario, can it be excluded that business elites will want to be reassured that their privileges will not be threatened but maintained or reinforced?
This approach to politics is often presented as realistic rather than ideological, as going with the grain of Malta's electoral, economic and media systems.
But in a bigger sense, such policies are not rational at all. Decades of rightwing and leftwing policies have failed to make Malta a more dynamic and orderly country, as promised. Yet the two main parties seem as addicted to them as ever.
Rising inequality, the cost of living crisis, the intermittent financial crises, the decay of public services and other social problems and hardships have all shifted attitudes sharply. More and more people are coming to believe that the government should control prices and reduce income differences between rich and poor.
The self-styled political realists of the right and centre-left can point out that such changes have not been reflected in general elections. To which the response ought to be: not yet. The possibility, if not probability, of a collapse of the Nationalist vote at the next election will give a more up-to-date sense of the credibility of right-wing political, economic and social thinking in Malta.
If Labour wins, having presented itself as the party of business, unlimited spending and law and order, then it may appear as if it will remain the incumbent government for quite some time.
Yet given the depth of many voters' disillusionment with the status quo and the state of public services, a Robert Abela premiership that only offers more of the same unpalatable post-Muscat remedies may not be sustainable for long.
Dr Mark Said is a lawyer