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Matthew Vella
The report published mid-week predicting the outcome of the forthcoming European Parliament elections in June may have failed to take into consideration certain unique aspects of the Maltese political scenario, according to political scientist John Lane, professor emeritus at the University of Buffalo, in New York State, USA.
Professor Lane is the creator of www.maltadata.com, a comprehensive electronic database of all Maltese general elections, local council elections and referenda and other statistics from 1921 to the present day.
‘Predicting the Future: The Next European Parliament’ is a report drawn up by Prof. Simon Hix from the London School of Economics and Dr Michael Marsh, of Trinity College, Dublin for Buson-Marsteller consultants. The report, which was not based on opinion polls but a scientific model that has proved to be 92 per cent accurate in all previous European elections, took into consideration as major factors the vote share in the last EU elections, vote share in the last national election and which party is in government.
According to the report, the June elections should see the PN increase their vote to 52.9 per cent, garnering three seats, Labour 41.2 per cent (two seats), and Alternattiva Demokratika garnering 5.9 per cent of the vote, but no seats.
According to John Lane, the statistical model used “has its uses and is better than relying on the reading of tea leaves or intuition,” but it must be approached with great caution. “Their paper itself is studded with terms like ‘maybe,’ ‘might’ and ‘probable.’ Political developments since the last national elections can seriously impair the model’s predictions. Even Hix and Marsh departed from their model and resorted to public opinion surveys for three countries - Germany, Poland and Slovakia - but not Malta. I for one, would have greater confidence in a study that relied on proper public opinion surveys in Malta.”
Accordingly, the report’s own criteria have resulted in a different outcome for the Maltese elections, apparently providing inconsistency with the general pattern of Maltese politics. Instead of using opinion polls, Hix and Marsh looked at the most recent national elections and used those to predict the outcome of the upcoming European Parliament elections.
Lane described as a “dubious assumption” for Malta, made by Hix and Marsh that supporters of governing parties would be less likely to vote in the European Parliament elections. However, while the report predicts declines in support for the largest parties throughout Europe, “for some unspecified reason, in Malta support for the PN is predicted to rise from 51.8 percent to 52.9 percent,” Lane pointed out.
He added: “The second assumption made is that many of those who will take the trouble to vote on June 12 will support opposition and protest parties. Indeed, their projected vote percentages show this across the board in Europe, except, once more and oddly enough, for Malta. Indeed, support for the opposition MLP is predicted to actually decline from 47.5 percent to 41.2 percent. The astounding figure of 5.9 percent for the AD is an eight-fold increase over their showing last year, a jump which no other Green Party in Europe was predicted by Hix and Marsh to come even close to.”
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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