Carmen SAMMUT

Pro-Rector for Student, Staff Affairs and Outreach at University of Malta, Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Malta

On 30 May 2026, Malta’s Labour Party (Partit Laburista – PL) was returned to power with a fourth historic electoral victory since 2013. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Robert Abela, it secured a majority of 51.77 per cent of the votes in a political landscape dominated by two main parties. Its political rival, the centre-right Partit Nazzjonalista (PN), obtained 44.68 per cent. The hard-fought campaign produced a turnout of 87.4 per cent, an increase of 1.8 percentage points that reversed a previous downward trend. Voting at 16 years of age was introduced in 2022, and this cohort was placed at the forefront of public activity as both parties emphasised renewal. Interpersonal contacts and doorstepping, facilitated in the context of a small country, also contributed. While voting is not obligatory, Malta has among the highest electoral turnouts, only trailing countries with compulsory voting.

The PN was led by Alex Borg, a 30-year-old who first entered politics in the 2022 election when he won a parliamentary seat from the island of Gozo. He is the fifth PN leader since 2013, and he took on the role of leader of the opposition merely eight months before the current election. After this year’s defeat, the PN is taking comfort in the fact that the government’s lead has diminished considerably over the past five years and that Borg obtained the highest number of personal votes in this election.

The snap election was called, although Prime Minister Abela could have remained in power until March 2027. The constitutional framework confers on the prime minister a de facto prerogative to advise the president on the dissolution of parliament at any time within the five-year legislature. The Labour Party was consistently leading in the polls, and Abela held a considerable advantage in the leader-trust barometer. In the months leading up to the announcement of an early election, there was widespread speculation that the incumbent party had been oiling its electoral machinery. Rumours intensified when PN anointed a new leader, since Alex Borg lacked significant leadership track record. When the PN launched its ‘new breath’ campaign centred on his candidacy, PL responded by highlighting his scarce political experience.

Labour’s main message was aimed at individuals: Int Malta (‘Malta is You’). Abela had taken office in January 2020 after winning the party leadership race. The former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat resigned, shouldering political responsibility in the wake of investigations into the 2017 murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and allegations of corruption involving senior government figures. Under Abela, the PL underwent a careful transformation, with his parliamentary group significantly different from the team that fronted Labour’s victory in 2013. Important members of the original team retired, others were unelected or left politics, while some were promoted to national or European positions. A few resigned amid accusations of scandal. Apart from this internal party transformation, Abela is credited with the way he managed the Covid-19 pandemic in a tourist-dependent economy impacted by lockdown. Islanders, dependent on imports and on sea and air transport for their food and energy security, had to face periods of inflation, which were addressed through state support for families and reassurances on utilities and fuel. Subsidies to stabilise fuel and energy prices were introduced in 2021 and maintained as other Europeans faced price hikes after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the ongoing 2026 crisis in the Gulf. The government’s narrative was that these measures were sustainable and backed by economic growth.

In 2024, the Council of the EU initiated the excessive deficit procedure against Malta because of a 4.9 per cent budget deficit in 2023, which exceeded the EU’s 3 per cent threshold. Before the election, data published by the National Statistics Office and Eurostat showed that the deficit declined substantially to 2.2 per cent of GDP. Finance Minister Clyde Caruana declared that the fiscal performance exceeded expectations. Although Malta still awaits a formal obrogation to exit the surveillance mechanism ahead of schedule, this development reinforced the government’s stance that the early election was a responsible measure to ensure political and economic stability. The main thrust of the campaign centred on economic performance and full employment. Its substantial manifesto pledges were framed as an exercise in wealth redistribution.

The Labour Party presented itself as an umbrella organisation where its political narrative invoked the concept of a ‘movement’ of moderates and progressives, first articulated in the 2013 election. It also emphasised on improving the free education system and providing higher stipends for students in tertiary education. The party also repeatedly referred to its achievements in civil rights, specifically its record on the LGBTQI+ agenda, which should not be taken for granted in the current global context.

At various points during the campaign, commentators argued that economic growth was unsustainable and too dependent on the construction industry and on imported labour. Such criticism was most prominently voiced by the Green Party AD-PD, which secured 1.31 per cent of the vote, and its offshoot ‘Momentum’, which obtained 1.54 per cent. In the preceding decade, immigrant workers increased the population by approximately 25 per cent, while demographic pressures and cultural complexities intensified. The largest foreign communities comprise Italian mobile workers, followed by British expatriates, Indians, Filipinos, Serbians and Bulgarians. The rapid influx generated considerable public resentment and was a recurring electoral theme.

The two major, middle-of-the-road parties sought to limit the electoral appeal of two smaller parties that advocated anti-immigrant positions. The far-right ‘L-Aħwa Maltin’ (Maltese Brothers and Sisters) secured only 1.31 per cent of the vote, while the hard-right party ‘Imperium Europa’ obtained merely 0.05 per cent. The prevalence of anti-immigrant rhetoric produced, nevertheless, contradictory political positions from the main parties. For example, the Labour leader invited a Muslim candidate of Syrian descent to contest the election as an inclusive move. A resulting backlash inflated underlying Islamophobic sentiments on social media in a country where the privileged position of the Roman Catholic Church is constitutionally entrenched. Labour grassroots supporters participated actively in the ensuing moral panic. The political fallout prompted both party leaders to declare that Malta did not need additional mosques, even though the country’s sole mosque, built in the 1970s, is widely regarded as overcrowded and insufficient to cater for the religious expression of a diverse Muslim community that exceeds 17,400 individuals.

The PN under Alex Borg also focused on local social, institutional and environmental reforms that were driven by voter sentiment. The party moved beyond its earlier technocratic approach and emphasis on the European project. Borg focused on reuniting a party weakened by years of deep internal divisions. His team reoriented the agenda towards youth-centred, family-oriented and quality-of-life/work-life balance policies such as a four-day working week pilot scheme, tax relief on the first €10,000 of part-time or overtime income, and further incentives for teleworking. As population density across the archipelago exceeded 1,700 persons per square kilometre and public frustration with demographic pressures intensified, the PN pledged to develop an underground transport system and to undertake studies on the archipelago’s carrying capacity. While both major parties emphasised well-being, detractors in the media argued that some pledges were economically unfeasible and lacked the strategic coherence necessary for effective long-term governance. They also argued that significant structural and sustainability challenges remained largely unaddressed. Overall, the campaign was relatively calm and centred on positive policy proposals rather than the demonisation of political opponents seen in the past. This was one of the least polarised campaigns in recent memory. The intensity of coordinated personal attacks and organised hostility against political families was notably limited.

A key positive feature of the 2026 election was the record number of female candidates, the highest level since the introduction of universal suffrage in 1947. The Labour Party fielded a historic 40 per cent female candidature. The Nationalist Party also significantly increased the proportion of female candidates, reaching 21 per cent. This development required substantial organisational mobilisation by both party apparatuses and merits recognition as an important step in the renewal of Malta’s political class. These developments should be considered in the context of the 2021-gender balance mechanism law, which had increased the representation of the under-represented sex in parliament from approximately 13 per cent to 28 per cent following the 2022 election. The mechanism had generated mixed public reactions. Women’s lobby groups had long advocated various quota systems, whereas critics, including the European Parliament’s President Roberta Metsola, questioned their implications for merit-based representation. The 2026 experience suggests that the mechanism served as an incentive and positively affected women’s electoral performance, with 12 women elected in the initial counts. Given that Malta uses proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote, the final composition of parliamentary groups will be determined once casual elections are concluded, where more women are likely to be elected. This will be followed by the allocation of additional seats under the gender corrective mechanism.

To conclude, with this election, PL consolidated its renewal while remaining in office, and both sides of the house of representatives will include a new generation of politicians who are more reflective of younger cohorts. It will also comprise the highest proportion of female parliamentarians ever. At the same time, relatively limited attention was devoted during the campaign to the particular needs of second-generation migrants who have acquired Maltese citizenship. In a political environment where populist narratives may seek to marginalise these communities, effective political leadership is required to challenge exclusionary discourse. The widespread use of opinion polls during this election also needs to be critically examined beyond their traditional role of estimating electoral outcomes and political speculation. The question of populism raises a broader debate concerning the role of opinion polls and the extent to which they shape party decision-making, political agendas and voter behaviour. While responsiveness to public opinion constitutes an important aspect of democratic action, excessive reliance on polling risks subjecting politics to volatile public preferences at the cost of long-term policy commitments and principled political leadership. The tension between responsiveness and leadership is a defining challenge in contemporary democracies that was also evident during the 2026 Maltese general election.