Malta
The story
From independence in 1964 up to and including the 2026 parliamentary election, no party besides Labour (PL) and the conservative Nationalist Party (PN) has ever won a parliamentary seat — a duopoly reinforced by an electoral system that strongly favours the two large parties. Politics has long been fiercely polarised between them even though both have, at various points, held positions elsewhere associated with the far left or far right: PL drifted sharply left in the 1970s–80s, turning the country away from the West and toward Gaddafi's Libya while opposing EU membership; PN has been strongly nationalist while championing Western integration since the 1990s, and remains deeply socially conservative even within the EPP.
2019– · The fringe, and Imperium Europa
A handful of challenger parties have tried and failed to break the duopoly. The biggest radical-right showing came in the 2019 EP election, when the fascist, openly racist Imperium Europa — led by Holocaust denier Norman Lowell — won 3.2 percent, not enough for a seat; support fell to 2.6 percent in 2024, and the party won less than 0.1% in the 2026 parliamentary election. Another nationalist challenger, Aħwa Maltin, contested every constituency in 2026 but won only slightly more than 0.5%.
The 2017 murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, followed by corruption revelations that forced PM Joseph Muscat's resignation in 2020, dealt a lasting blow to Malta's self-image as a consolidated liberal democracy, yet no challenger has broken through, including at the 2026 election. Both parties remain firmly pro-European and socially conservative; a small new centrist party, Momentum, founded in January 2025 under Arnold Cassola and focused on good governance, anti corruption and environmental issues, has so far attracted around 3% in opinion polls.
EP elections
PN and PL are the only two parties to have ever won a Maltese EP seat. In 2024, independent candidate Arnold Cassola — a former Green party figure — took 4.9 percent, the strongest independent showing in years, but still fell short of a seat.