#televote

I wanted to share this with you all.

After the final i was very sad because i couldn't understand how they got only a few points while they recived so much Love on all platforms.

Bang the gong! Finally, it had to happen. We've gone full televote. 100% of the vote in this year's final came from the public. The juries were there but only to provide a back-up in the case of a technical problem or unforeseen circumstances.

That's going to make my analysis of this year's final a little more boring than usual. However there are a couple of points of note.

First - of course - there's a semi-final to look at as well, and in that a back-up jury was used. Monaco and Croatia both had issues with their phone networks. The Croatian mobile service provider had forgotten to delete votes for their own country. These were recalculated without those votes, and the remaining televote went forward, so the Croatian backup jury wasn't used. However the Monaco jury did have their verdicts included in the result, as the problems affecting their televote couldn't be fixed.

Having just a single jury vote to compare doesn't really lead to any well-founded conclusions, but it is possible to have a look at the running order biases.

After experimenting (successfully!) with the reverse recap in 2002 and 2003, the EBU have removed it from 2004. We're back to a standard running order recap and it shows. Both the Monegasque back-up jury and the televote heavily favoured the second-half of the running order in the semi-final. Even though Ukraine and Greece were in the first-half, none of the first seven countries on stage qualified. This bias is probably due in large part to the random running order placing several of the weaker songs towards the start, but even so, around 60% of both the jury and televote went to the second-half countries.

Having a semi-final allows us to see the relative strengths of the two halves of the draw for the first time - which gives added context to the outcome.

In the final, both of the big two from the semi-final (Ukraine and Serbia & Montenegro) were drawn in the first half. Even with this advantage, the first half barely exceeded the second half in the televote 52%-48%. It's going to take a few more years of reverting to non-reverse recaps to see if the effect is noticeable again. I'm already missing it.

One other point of note. Even though all competing countries could vote in both the semi-final and the final, leading to higher scores all round, there were three fewer countries voting in the semi than in the final. This was because of France, Poland and Russia not broadcasting the semi-final on the grounds that they weren't in it and interest was low. Some countries just take longer to get it than others...

Despite there being more voting points than ever that doesn't mean that countries receiving zero-points can't happen. And it did happen this year. Commiserations to Switzerland - the first ever country to get zero points in a Eurovision semi-final!

Is Norway's 60/40 Split The Future Of Eurovision? At Melodi Grand Prix in Norway this year, the public was given 60 per cent of the voting share, whereas international juries made up 40 per cent of the total points distribution. Ben Robertson looks at how this change impacted Norway's result and if Eurovision should learn from what Norway has introduced this year.

Congratulations to Gåte, the Norwegian band who brought their take on a traditional folktale to Melodi Grand Prix, who now have the chance to take it to the whole Eurovision Song Contest. Outside the dancing robots, tender ballads and the insane statistics that all qualifiers were drawn in last three songs in each heat, the thing that caught my attention about Melodi Grand Prix is the voting…

Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to today's statistical map, a requested companion piece to one I made a few days ago about the juries - today we look at the average televote score that ESC countries have received in the past five years and how much it's differed from jury votes!

Whilst Sweden has been the top dog in juries this quinquennium, when it comes to the public vote, Italy definitely takes that place, gaining on average 222 pts per year - without the lacklustre 2016 score where they placed a remote 18th, this would soar to 269 because of an immense track record with the televote including 1st (2015), 6th (2017), 3rd (2018) and 3rd (2019). Their closest counterparts in terms of public support are Russia on 202 average annual points despite their low-rating NQ in 2018. In an average year, the televoters give Italy 89 points more than jurors and Russia 71 pts - two of the biggest discrepancies of this kind.

Completing the set of most voted on average by televoters are Ukraine, Bulgaria and Portugal, who each raked in between 130-160 televotes on average per year, though each country comes with an asterisk of sorts - Ukraine and Bulgaria missed 2 of the past 5 years, so it's easier to get a strong average, whilst Portugal is buoyed solely by their historic win, having received lacklustre televotes in other years. Sweden, Moldova and Belgium are the next strongest amongst countries who've missed none of the past 5 years - despite the former of the three having the biggest negative difference between televote and jury of all countries, getting almost 80 pts more from jurors than televoters, a gap that has broadened since.

Bottom of the pile for average annual televotes is the UK, Spain (having the unfortunateness of being the only country in the bottom 5 for average jury score and televote score), Malta, Montenegro and Germany, who would be absolute bottom were it not for 2018's success. Malta have the second biggest negative difference between televote and juries, gaining 76 pts more in the latter than the former on average. Malta has been a jury qualifier all five years, but only narrowly scraped a lowly qualification position in two of them - one has to wonder if Destiny can bridge that difference.

The country that would gain the most if ESC moved to a model where the televote counted more than jury seems certain to be Poland. Gaining 69 pts more each year from the public than from jurors, it would have not missed a single final from 2015-9 if the televoters were in charge, but has never been listed as a jury qualifier in all that time. A full data table is available below!

First thoughts on the 2021 #Eurovision Grand Final

Let’s start with the awesome stuff! Kudos Congratulations Måneskin for winning the 65th Eurovision Song Contest. This is Italy’s third victory—but their first where televoting was an aspect of the scoring system. Italy’s 524 votes included 206 jury votes and a massive 318 televote points. Italy scored televote points from every other delegation, including five douze points and 12 dix points.…