#infe

One factor that immediately stands out is the lack of one definite favourite to win. While last year, Sweden's victory was pretty much the obvious conclusion (which was also reflected by Loreen topping all these three polls), this year is clearly more open, with each poll having a different country on the top spot. Croatia turned out as the OGAE winner, INFE voters preferred Switzerland, and Italy emerged victorious after combining the jury and online votes of the Eurojury. That being said, none of those three countries could be considered a shock winner or unpopular favourite when looking at all three clubs' results, with all of them comfortably making it to the top five along with Belgium. The consistency continues with France, Ukraine, and Netherlands getting a top ten placing in all three polls; even Greece isn't in a bad place, as they only barely missed the top ten in the OGAE poll.

It gets more interesting when you look at where the polls' opinions differ more strongly. A striking example is Germany, who takes the all-too-familiar last place in the two fan club polls, yet earned the eight place in the combined Eurojury results; a placing largely thanks to the jury vote that placed the song fifth, even higher than the fan favourite Croatia (albeit only by two points). Serbia's lovely ballad, while not being what fans tend to gravitate towards, also earned a decent score in Eurojury and got tenth overall. In contrast, Austria and Lithuania got a significantly colder reception from Eurojury juries, raising the concerns of them ending up as flopping fan favourites.

When it comes to the "un-favourites" of the polls, all three agree on Poland and Azerbaijan being among the weakest final-worth entries, both ending on bottom five. Overall the first semifinal is clearly seen as the weaker one, with all bottom fives being dominated by semi 1 songs. When it comes to borderline qualifiers of the second semi, Armenia, Georgia, and Denmark aren't getting too much love from any camp. (On the other hand, Armenia did get a top ten result in the Eurojury jury vote - a bit surprising considering the general tendency of juries snubbing ethnic entries.) As for non-qualifiers, none of the polls would give a place in the final to Iceland, Moldova, Australia, Malta, Czechia, Albania, San Marino, or Latvia. Interestingly enough, Finland got a decent result in the INFE poll, getting 16th. Said poll seems to be fonder of "funny" entires, considering they also have Estonia following suit.

Could these polls give a hunch about the overall results? We should remember that the fan bubble can differ from the general public's taste, and the eventual live performances can have a huge impact towards either direction. That being said, Eurovision winners rarely come out of the blue, and if I had to pick a most likely winner based on multiple factors, it would be either Italy or Switzerland. However, the Eurojury jury winner France also stands a chance - you shouldn't underestimate the power of good-looking men singing romantic ballads, as we saw with Marco Mengoni last year - and despite all of the worries about Croatia flopping in the jury vote, their victory is still within possibility. And based on what we've seen, Ukraine is ready to deliver a magical performance that could very well touch the hearts of both viewers and jury members.

So, what can we see?

When it comes to the “green” placings (the poll result being the same as the real one), OGAE got the most of them; not that any poll “guessed” correctly many exact results. Two polls had Estonia in 13rd place and Germany 25th aka last. Not the first time that the latter country suffers from a poor result in both polls and the real contest...

However, keeping in mind that only the jury vote was counted in Eurojury, they got close to the actual jury vote. Both had UK as their winner, Ukraine as the fourth place, Germany last, and Australia, Belgium, and Switzerland significantly higher than in the audience score. Remember what I said about juries loving male ballads?

All three polls had countries that ended up not qualifying as their “finalists”. The biggest flopper was definitely Albania who didn’t make it despite a top ten placing in two polls. Seeing that Albania was a qualifier for the televote but not the jury, it makes sense that its Eurojury score was lower. However, the curse of flopping pop girlies doesn’t end there; Cyprus and Austria also fared worse than expected.

While not outright flops, the results of Italy and Netherlands might have been disappointing to those who got into the hype based on poll results. Interestingly enough Eurojury got the most accurate result for Netherlands, despite the song faring better in the actual jury than in the televote! (As for Italy, they seem to be constantly overrated beforehand... except for the year when they actually won.)

Enough about flops - what about the dark horses of the year? None of the three polls could have expected the televote success of Serbia and Moldova, that got both countries in the top ten. Shows that many times these kinds of quirky and humorous entries are paid dust by both the general fandom and the juries (and that’s one reason why I wouldn’t want the eurofandom to decide the results/participants... we love to complain about ballads, but imagine a contest full of mainstream pop and girlie bangers).

Iceland was also a dark horse to a lesser extent. Sure they didn’t get a great placing, but for a song that wasn’t expected to qualify in any of the polls, getting into the final was a succeed in itself. As someone who loved Systur from the start, this makes me happy!