Like with any general election, there is a lot on the line when the Maltese and Gozitan people go to cast their vote on 30 May.

People will be voting for the direction that they think the country should take in the next five years - and they will be sending a message to a cohort of politicians who, irrespective of which political colour they represent, have a lot at stake.

What the country's main politicians and their parties have to gain with a good result is obvious: but what do they stand to lose should things not go to plan for them?

Robert Abela has the most to lose

Robert Abela is, without a doubt, the individual with the most to lose in this general election.

The Labour Party and its ardent followers will not only be expecting to win an historic fourth consecutive general election, but will be thinking that anything less than a win by another landmark majority will be seen as a sign of weakness.

The Labour Party has won the last three general elections by enormous majorities: by 35,107 votes in 2013, 35,280 votes in 2017, and 39,474 votes in 2022.  These are majorities that the party has grown used to.  Simply winning is no longer enough:  it has to be a statement win.

Robert Abela has plunged the country into an election campaign a year early. That means that this campaign is, at least at the start, being played out entirely on his own terms.  He has set the date and decided the context within which the election is held.

The PL was evidently ready for the campaign announcement.  No sooner did Abela's recorded message come to an end did tens of billboards with the party's slogan Int Malta be put up - an onslaught of political messaging that pockmarked every semi arterial road in the country.

This means that while Abela has given himself the best chance of success by setting the election on his own terms, it has also given him very little room for error. 

The party was shocked at the loss of votes that it suffered in the European Parliament elections just under two years ago - a loss of votes that defied all polling.  A repeat - even if Labour wins the election - could prove to be a very difficult pill to swallow for a party which has grown used to being invincible.

Various polls show the PL in the lead, but by margins ranging from 8,500 votes to 25,000 votes.  Each poll indicates a victory - but a margin of victory that is quite a chunk below what the PL has grown used to.

The party thus far has had a remarkable knack to continually renew itself - as it did after the 2024 European Parliament elections - but maintaining the status quo with the result from two years may throw worrying signals Abela's way: that the people aren't really buying into the party's renewal.

And if the PL were to lose?  It would represent the biggest political upset in Maltese political history - a true snatching defeat from the jaws of victory story. It is a result that would make Robert Abela's position at the head of the party untenable, and which would dump his party unceremoniously back into the Opposition benches.

Can the PN afford to lose another election?

Many will agree that Alex Borg has quite an unenviable task before him. 

With less than a year under his belt in the job of Nationalist Party leader, he must turn a party which has seemed perennially unelectable for far too long into a political machine that is capable of winning its way into government.

This is an election which, even if the PN does not emerge victorious, Alex Borg may emerge from largely unscathed.  After all, he has only been in the last for nine months. 

Indeed, should the PN emerge from the election with a smaller margin of defeat than previous elections, it may even galvanise Borg as the man who may well change the party's fortunes, given that he's only been in the party's top post for a brief period of time.

This isn't to say that this is a free pass for Borg irrespective of what may happen on 30 May, but there is historical precedent to indicate that his party members may err on the side of leniency should the PN lose.

The precedent is, of course, Borg's predecessor Bernard Grech.  He was elected as PN leader in October 2020, after an episode of near internal hara-kiri which saw the party divided down the middle over whether Adrian Delia should remain leader or not.

Grech led the PN to the polls in March 2022 - 18 months later - and came out of that election with the PN's worst electoral defeat on record.  But he retained the backing of his party, with 81% of councillors voting for him to stay on in the role. 

But what would yet another electoral defeat mean for the PN as a party?

The party has been in Opposition for 13 years, and has not won an election since the 2008 general election - 18 years ago.  There are 16-year-old voters eligible for this year's election who will have no recollection of life under a PN government, and who were not even born when the PN last ran a winning electoral campaign.

Another defeat would consign the party to the Opposition benches for a fourth legislature - something no party has ever happened.  It would also strengthen the pessimistic attitude that many middle of the road voters feel: that the PN really will never win an election again.

Politics is all about cycles, yet it feels as if while Labour has been racing the Tour de France for 13 years, the PN has yet to even get its helmet strapped on.  The fact that - according to the most recent MaltaToday survey - only 8% of the electorate actually harbours any belief that the PN can win the election is an indictment of just that notion.

Can this party really survive another five years in Opposition?  Can it recover from yet another defeat? Would it be happy with a defeat by a margin that isn't an historical drubbing? Or could another loss, however big or small, end up being an existential threat for the party?

And most importantly: if the PN were to lose yet again, how can it go about convincing the people out there that they are even capable of winning an election?  If it can't do that, then what would be the point of it all?

So, while history suggests that Alex Borg may have some leeway with his party members in the case of a defeat, will the party itself have any leeway left with voters out there should it lose?

These are the questions which will haunt the PN should it once again be consigned to a heavy defeat in a little bit less than a month.

Can third parties capitalise?

Malta's bipartisan political system is an anomaly in European politics.

The country has not elected a third party into Parliament since 1966, save for two Partit Demokratiku candidates who were elected on the PN's electoral ticket in 2017. 

There is nothing, save for blind hope, to suggest that that will change in these elections - and that in itself is an indictment of these small parties.

The European Parliament elections and local council elections in 2024 offered a sign that the tide may be turning, and that people may start to be more inclined to opt away from the two main parties.

Independent candidates alone garnered over 22,000 votes in the European Parliament elections, with Arnold Cassola in particular scooping up 12,706 votes and Conrad Borg Manche netting 5,936 votes.

At a local level, nine independent candidates were elected to various local councils - including two who are mayors of their respective localities - while ADPD elected two councillors of their own.

Cassola, who is a familiar face to politics, emerged as the most emboldened of all of them: he had managed to harness the disillusionment of younger generations with mainstream politics in his favour, and his next step was to open a new political party which was aptly named Momentum.

However, polling suggests that any momentum since then has largely dissipated.  The party barely features in the latest round of polls.

The same can be said of ADPD.  The party's campaign in 2024 was largely a failure: Cassola, Borg Manche, and right-wing Imperium Europa attracted more votes than the Green Party. 

Leader Sandra Gauci has told the media time and time again that she wanted to change how the party runs: she wanted to change its name, its logo, its brand, and its media strategy, stating that one press conference per week on a Saturday is not enough for the party's message to get through.

None of that has happened. ADPD remains the same old party that it always was, with the same faces. 

This election presents an opportunity to third parties, with polling showing that we could be on course for a record number of voters who opt not to vote.  But can they capitalise?

It's up to parties like ADPD and Momentum to prove that they can be a credible alternative - otherwise they risk being condemned to the pile of historic political irrelevance.