The road ahead will be hard, he said, and a post-mortem of the party's loss would be required to look into how support for the party declined so much.

 

Prof Cassola said the polarisation of voters meant that there was less movement of votes between the two major political parties, adding that voting occurred according to a block pattern.

 

He also said that he expected more cross voting, which disappointingly didn’t happen, adding that he believed that many of the protest votes went towards the labour party and its candidates.

 

Asked if he regretted that his party had moved closer towards the PL, and if the experience had negatively affected him, Cassola was initially considerably perplexed .

He pointed out that while it possibly was a mistaken impression held by NET TV, it was certainly not the case.

He answered that the only time that the AD had moved closer to a political party was to the Nationalist Party for the 2003 general election.