Jul 05 Isola Clinches By-Election – Almost 10% Lead Over GSD
Albert Isola, the GSLP candidate in yesterday’s by-election, will today be sworn in as the tenth Government Minister after coming first by a margin of almost 10% in the public vote. Mr Isola, who secured 4,899 votes (49.8%) beat the GSD candidate Marlene Nahon who received 3,927 (40%). The PDP’s Nick Cruz received 688 votes (7%) and independent candidate Bryan Zammit secured a total of 315 votes (3.2%).
The overall turnout for the by-election was 10,034 which represents 46.34% of the electorate, a figure slightly lower than that of 48.83% for the last by-election in 1999 and much lower, as expected, than the last general election which saw 82.52% of the electorate turn up to vote.
Lengthy frontier queues have developed throughout the afternoon. At 2pm, the estimated queuing time was 45 minutes. This quickly changed and, by 5pm, the estimated time was over 1.5 hours.
By 6pm, some 6,818 people which is 31.49% of eligible voters had come out to vote in today’s by-election. By this time in the evening during the December 2011 General Election, 13,084 people (60.26%) had already voted.
