As I write this, in the final week of the election campaign, the last billboards are going up. The latest one gives me a Les Misérables feel, with the chorus of One Day More ringing in my ears, as the Maltese flag is triumphantly waved. And in these final hours, the campaign turns more than ever into a performance mode.
Attention during the last week shifts to the final mass meetings. Less political rally, more choreographed street party with star musicians. Music booming and flags waving. A campaign finale designed for Instagram and reel culture. This was, unmistakably, a social media election. Politics increasingly became about what could be viewed, captured, clipped, and shared within seconds. Viral moments mattered as much as proposals. Emotions and attention online became currency.
The campaign was characterised by what we could take, even though, in the end, the winner supposedly takes it all. The language of entitlement weaved through the last few weeks. Like watching a ping pong game, we turned heads as the prize kept getting higher. What would we be getting for 'free'? Which cheque, which benefit, which promise would land next? At times, caricatured for their absurdity.
Some online comments centred on mocking this transactional tone that increasingly defined the campaign. Many observers and online discussions described the campaign as dominated by the two parties' excessive pledges, subsidies, and "vote-buying" narratives. This reflects what sociologists might call the commodification of citizens, where voters are increasingly approached as consumers of benefits rather than participants in democratic deliberation. The emphasis on financial incentives over long-term structural debate suggests a political culture shaped by short electoral cycles and immediate gratification.
One of the central sociological features of the 2026 campaign has been the contrast between one party seeking continuity and another seeking systemic change. The governing Labour Party framed itself around economic stability, welfare expansion, and direct financial support to households, presenting the state as a provider and protector during uncertain global conditions. This reflects the persistence of electoral loyalty, often reinforced through tangible material benefits and personalised state support.
By contrast, the Nationalist Party under Alex Borg attempted to reposition the campaign around nifs ġdid, identity, quality of life, and traffic congestion and solutions. Yet both major parties seemed to miss a deeper question raised more directly by smaller movements: the country's lost soul and sustainability.
The smaller parties such as Momentum and ADPD reflected growing frustration, particularly concerning sustainability, governance, and institutional reform. Still, the enduring strength of the two-party system shows how Maltese politics remains deeply shaped by family loyalties, and historical memory.
The campaign further reflects the sociology of small states. In Malta, politics is unusually intimate and socially embedded. Politicians are highly visible, accessible, and connected to local communities through kinship, patronage networks, festas, football clubs, and everyday social interactions. Elections therefore become not only political events but also social rituals reinforcing collective identities and partisan belonging. Political colour, symbolism, and public meetings continue to operate as markers of community affiliation. Old patterns of patronage still linger, even as new forces reshape daily life. Increasingly, politics sits alongside the commodification of everything; from attention online to how people present themselves in the public space.
The campaign also sparked discussion around the reliability of surveys, though less about their actual methodology and more about perception. The real test of "reliability" was often reduced to a familiar refrain on social platforms: "Għax lili ma ċempluliex?" The public debate was largely less about sampling margins, weighting, or statistical confidence, and more about whether people accepted the results being presented to them as believable in the first place.
By the time you read this, the atmosphere will have changed completely. Tension will be thick inside the testosterone-fuelled Naxxar counting hall. Nail-biting moments. Candidates pacing nervously. Supporters glued to every update. Then come the carefully choreographed tisbiet mal-perspex; triumph performed in front of the cameras within seconds of confirmation.
The results will spread instantly from the counting hall to every household. And the streets, once again, will transform. Car horns blaring into the night. Carcades snaking through villages. Malta turning politics into spectacle, celebration, and ritual all at once.
Finally, the 2026 campaign illustrates a society negotiating the contradictions of rapid shifts. Malta today is economically dynamic yet socially strained; globally connected yet culturally anxious; materially prosperous yet increasingly concerned with quality of life and social cohesion. The election campaign became a stage upon which these tensions were publicly expressed, especially on online social platforms. In this sense, the campaign was not only about choosing a government but also about competing visions of what Malta itself should become in the future.