My interest in Maltese elections began during a sabbatical leave spent in Malta in 1976. Several years later, with the advent of personal computers and internet access, it became practicable to organize the rather complex body of Maltese electoral data for shared use. Thus I began a systematic collection of such data, something that had not been attempted before. The results were stored in a machine-readable database that was to be both comprehensive and universally accessible. 

The project was essentially completed by the time of the 1992 election. It has since been updated through the 2003 general election and expanded to include referenda as well as all local council elections through 2007.

All tabulations and analyses in this website are based on the record of some 3,611 candidacies that have been undertaken in national elections since 1921 and on 3,885 candidacies in local council elections. These records include such information as the voluminous vote transfers that are characteristic of single-transferable-vote (STV) systems.

The original database was designed for statistical analysis and therefore put in coded form. In that form it is still available on on this server. In time, however, it became obvious that many persons seemed more interested in, and more comfortable with, a data presentation in plain-text, browsable form. Those preferences prompted the creation of this Web site.

Documentary Sources: The basic sources were the various Declarations of Results of Poll published by the Electoral Commission in the Government Gazette immediately after each election. These tabulations report the votes received and transferred in each district, on each count, for each individual candidate.

Because these compilations go out of print very soon after an election, it was necessary to procure photocopies of old Declarations from the few libraries (none of them outside Malta) that had kept reasonably readable copies of the originals going back to 1921.

Other printed materials which proved useful to complement the Declarations of the Results of Poll were the official statistical yearbooks and Maltese-language accounts of elections by Michael Schiavone and Remig Sacco, respectively.

Personal Acknowledgments: The creation and maintenance of a large database owes much to the assistance and encouragement by many people. The following persons in Malta helped me in many different ways, large and small, and their generosity is hereby acknowledged with gratitude: