#televotes

HOW DID THIS WORK.

The Eurovision.tv website presented the ‘Detailed voting breakdown’ for each country except Belarus, in the below format:

From here each placing from the jury and the televote were converted into a number descending to 0. The example above is for Slovenia’s votes in the final. The 0 points would be award to Slovenia in this case as they cannot vote for themselves and therefore all other songs in the final receive something from Slovenia from 25 to 1. In the case of a non-qualifier in the final, because they have provided scores for 26 finalists, the zero will go to the country that scored 26th place. Everyone else gets a vote from 25 to 1. I used a similar format for the semi finals.

Clear as mud? You’ll see,

SEMI FINAL 1

Scoring: 17 to 0 (Zeros only awarded by Big nations)

Semi final one was pretty uneventful. The same 10 qualifiers would have reached the final with this method. There are a few places that are different, but in all not much difference.

No real change; Serbia switched places Cyprus, as did Slovenia and Belarus, and with beneficial preferences  Hungary take 8th place from the jury instead of 10th.

The only change from the televoters is that Montenegro and Finland switched places, while the Greeks and the Cypriots retained a tie at ninth.

Same outcome with only Slovenia taking 5th from Greece and the tie break between Cyprus and San Marino is resolved.

SEMI FINAL 2

Scoring: 18 to 0 (Zeros only awarded by Big nations)

Semi final two is where one nation misses out on the finals and the preferences of the televoters make their mark.

More favourable lower points show North Macedonia and the Netherlands as the top 2 with this new method and Sweden takes 3rd. Russia and Switzerland switched places, Armenia takes 13th with the juries, Croatia experiences a small drop.

Norway retains the top placing, while Sweden, N. Macedonia, Lithuania and the bottom four retain their places. Everyone else has changed places. Albania would have missed out on the finals in a televote only semi final with Lithuania taking that spot. 

There are rumours that some errors in the semi final votes and Lithuania should have taken Denmark’s place. With this method, both would have qualified in place of Albania thanks mainly to the televoters. The Netherlands are still the winners of the semi final, North Macedonia takes the runner-up place replacing Sweden who has dropped to 5th. Ireland did not get last with the new method with Austria penalised by the televoters.

THE FINAL

Scoring: 25 to 0 (Zeros only awarded by non finalist countries)

The Netherlands would have won the jury vote with this vote system over North Macedonia and Sweden due to their limited lower ratings from the juries. The bottom half of the table has much more movement with countries such as the UK, Norway, Serbia and Israel gaining much needed votes and seeing others such as San Marino, Greece and Albania slide downwards.

The top 9 placing are very much the same with only Switzerland and Russia changing places. From there down though, it’s a salad. Spain capitalised to take 10th, and favourable televotes towards France, Denmark, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Malta, and Germany saw them rise also. Greece, San Marino and the United Kingdom received the most last places with the televoters and they have suffered for it. 

There are winners and losers. The Netherlands and Italy retain positions one and two while Germany and the UK retain the bottom two places, but there is some movement everywhere else.

Favourable voting has seen Switzerland, Azerbaijan, Australia, France, Estonia, Spain and Belarus improve their placings. The worst of the movers are Greece, Cyprus and San Marino descending four places each. Most other countries gained a place or two.

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In conclusion, I have proved nothing, but also pointed out a lot. The 12 point system of voting was introduced at the 1975 Eurovision Song Contest and the schema of voting has changed marginally in providing votes in the song contest. That worked when the song contest was 20-22 countries being involved. But the increase of nations to 40+, Eurovision may need to look at a new voting system.