News | Sunday, 19 April 2009

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Hix’s MEP survey ‘not based on domestic polls’

Matthew Vella
A Europe-wide survey on the MEP elections given major prominence by the national broadcaster PBS last week was not based on domestic polls, this newspaper can reveal.
The Predict09.eu survey, endorsed by the European Parliament, was reported by PBS last week, giving prominence to the prediction that Alternattiva Demokratika was heading for a four-point drop in its vote.
The survey predicts that, as in 2004, the Nationalist Party will lose the election to Labour with three seats for the PL and two for the PN. It predicts an absolute majority for the PL with 50.6% while the PN recovers 5.2 points from 2004 to win 45% of the vote. AD drops from 10 to 4.4%.
However, the predictions are not based on domestic polls, because the survey’s authors – leading political scientists Simon Hix and Nick Vivyan (LSE), and Michael Marsh (Trinity College Dublin) – are not aware of any ongoing surveys in Malta.
Asked on what polls the survey was based upon, Prof. Marsh told MaltaToday that imputed poll data was used “as there were no available polls”.
Marsh said the predictions were imputed from the relationship between polls – in the case of Malta, the last general elections – and the 2004 MEP election results.
The methodology is based on the votes each party received in the 2004 elections, and tweaked by imputing the 2008 general election results and whether the parties contesting today are in government or in opposition to ‘correct’ the predictions.
PBS head of news Natalino Fenech did not comment when asked whether the absence of polls was taken into consideration when PBS broadcast the survey results.
A week after the Predict09.eu survey, MaltaToday’s regular survey on the MEP elections – placing the PL ahead of the PN by seven points with 25.5% of the vote – went unreported by PBS. The survey shows Labour heading towards an absolute majority; if only declared voters are taken into consideration, the survey indicates that 54.3% will vote Labour, while 39.8% will vote PN.

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