James Debono
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi gained three points of approval since June, when in last week’s MaltaToday survey, 41% of respondents expressed positive judgement on his performance.
But 32% gave Gonzi the thumbs down on his performance as PM, as revealed in the survey held in the first week September in which 300 respondents were asked to assess the Prime Minister’s performance.
Significantly, 11% of Nationalist voters judge Gonzi’s performance negatively, while the same percentage of Labour voters deemed his performance to be a positive one.
This is an indication that the Prime Minister manages to attract a degree of sympathy even from Labour voters despite being scorned by an equal percentage of respondents who voted PN in last March’s election.
But while these disillusioned PN voters are being lured by Labour’s new leader Joseph Muscat, Labour voters who judge the Prime Minister’s performance positively are not turning their back on their party leader.
While 75% of those Nationalist voters who expressed a negative judgement on Gonzi’s performance opt for Labour leader Joseph Muscat when asked who they trust most between the two leaders, 72% of Labour voters satisfied by Gonzi’s performance still opt for Muscat. Most of the satisfied Labour respondents judge the performance of both party leaders positively.
Both parties include a significant element which expresses a positive judgement on both party leaders.
While Muscat’s performance as party leader is judged positively by 47% of PN voters, Gonzi’s performance as prime minister is deemed positive by 11% of Labour voters. A further 25% of Labour voters deem Gonzi’s performance as ‘fair’.
Yet the vast majority of Labour voters still judge Gonzi’s performance negatively. Moreover, Gonzi gets a lower approval rate than Joseph Muscat whose performance as MLP leader gets the approval of 66.3% of respondents.
Even this could reflect the difference between the two roles. For while the Prime Minister is accountable for the government’s decisions, the leader of the party of Opposition is not.
Compared to a similar survey held in June, the number of those giving a positive assessment of the Prime Minister’s performance increased from 38% to 41%.
But at the same time those who judge him negatively have also increased from 29.5% to 32%. The increase in both camps corresponds to a 10% decrease in those who could not express a verdict on the Prime Minister’s performance.
But among Nationalist voters the number of those who give the thumbs down to the Prime Minister has grown from 9.2% to 10.5%.