The study, conducted over a two-week period starting on September 17, found that 25.76 per cent of all respondents were likely to vote for the Labour Party and 19.20 per cent said they will vote for the Nationalist Party if an election were held the day after the interview. The "undecided" amounted to 24.98 per cent of respondents and 9.77 per cent claimed they will not vote.

Across the different electoral districts surveyed by The Times, the largest difference between the MLP and the PN featured in the third (Fgura, Marsascala and Zejtun), second (Vittoriosa, Cospicua, Senglea, Kalkara, Xghajra and Zabbar) and first (Floriana, Valletta, Hamrun and Pietà) electoral districts in declining order, with the MLP featuring a majority of responses (response = 51.99 per cent, 45.15 per cent and 21.89 per cent respectively).

The highest level of "undecided" responses were located in the first district and the largest numbers of those saying they "will not vote" were found to be in the eighth (Birkirkara, Santa Venera, Iklin and Lija) and third districts (18.92 per cent and 17.26 per cent response respectively). Alternattiva Demokratika featured the highest level response in the ninth district - Msida, San Gwann, Swieqi, Ta' Xbiex and Gharghur - (4.74 per cent).

The two large political parties face a different fate when it comes to the popularity of the leaders, even if both PN leader Lawrence Gonzi and MLP leader Alfred Sant headed the "top-of-mind" mentions when participants were asked to name such a personality. In the survey, Dr Gonzi was mentioned by 30.17 per cent of respondents as against Dr Sant's 18.89 per cent.

Other political figures attracted responses that typically stood at less than five per cent of the responses, except for former MLP leader Dom Mintoff, who got 5.39 per cent of all mentions. A good 25.86 per cent of respondents could not mention a political figure. An analysis of the mentions when divided according to their political party affiliation showed that 39.87 per cent of the names listed were figures connected to the PN and 32.26 per cent to the MLP.

In terms of the general situation in the country, the survey found that 32.6 per cent of respondents perceived that Malta's conditions are worsening - 3.7 per cent of them indicated that "things were worsening considerably. Another 25.1 per cent thought that conditions are improving, with 2.8 per cent of them arguing that "things were improving considerably".

Furthermore, 38.4 per cent of respondents felt that Malta's performance is neither bad nor good, leaving a further 3.8 per cent of respondents being unable to answer. A total of 638 interviews were conducted with a sample of participants, selected at random. An overall response rate of 21.3 per cent was attained throughout the field research.