Adrian Kavanagh's Blog

Adrian Kavanagh, 30th May 2012

Who would have won the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest if the advantages helping some competing countries arising from traditional patterns of “friends and neighbours” voting and diaspora voting (or bloc voting) had no impact on this year’s result? This post attempts to tease this out by comparing the number of points won by each country in Saturday night’s final against the number of points that each country would have been predicted to receive based on the past patterns of voting of those countries that were voting in this year’s contest, as was outlined in an earlier post. In a similar analysis for last year’s final, it was found that Ireland would have been the country who would have won that year’s contest if friends and neighbours/diaspora voting had not had an impact. So which country would have “won” this year? (more…)

Adrian Kavanagh, 29th May 2012

The 2012 Eurovision Song Contest was won by Sweden, a country with one of the highest GDP per capita levels in Europe, while the 2009 and 2010 contests were also won by countries that rank amongst the most economically developed in Europe, namely Norway and Germany. However, the general trend in Eurovisions since the introduction of televoting in 1998 has been for the contest to be dominated by the more economically underdeveloped countries in the eastern part of the continent, meaning that there is a largely inverse relationship between levels of economic well-being (GDP per capital levels) and Eurovision success (as measured by the average number of points won by countries in all Eurovision contests competed in since 1998).  

Figure 1: Scatterplot showing the relationship between average Eurovision points (1998-2012) GDP per capita (Source: CIA World Factbook 2012) by country

(more…)

Adrian Kavanagh, 27th May 2012

Eurovision 2012 was very much a case of a mixed bag for Ireland. In the semi final Jedward attained one of the best results for an Irish act at Eurovision during the 2000s while finishing in 6th place with a 92 points tally – in the 2011 semi final (with one more country voting than in the 2012 semi final) they had finished in 8th place with 68 points. Indeed the semi final result was Ireland’s best Eurovision result since 1997 – while Eamonn Toal also finished 6th in his 2000 final and also won 92 points in that contest (spooky coincidence!!!), there were three more countries voting in the 2000 final than in the 2012 semi final.  However in the final Jedward finished in 19th place and won exactly half their semi final points tally (46 points) despite the fact that (slightly) more than twice the number of countries that had voted in Semi Final 1 were voting in the final. By contrast, their 2011 Final result had marked a significant improvement points-wise on their result in the preceding semi final, winning 119 points while still finishing in 8th position.

So who voted for Ireland this year? And more pertinently which countries voted for Ireland in the semi final but switched their preferences for the final? The following table, based on the official results published on the Eurovision website, tells all. (more…)

Adrian Kavanagh, 21st May 2012

Song and performance matters in terms of ultimate Eurovision success, but as previous posts have shown “diaspora” and “friends and neighbours” voting can also help a country’s prospects of doing well in the contest, though of course not in themselves proving sufficient to win the contest for that country. But another key factor that can shape a country’s hopes of winning the contest is the draw position they get to perform in, with the usual rule of thumb suggesting that a late draw position significantly helps a country’s hopes of doing well in the contest. (more…)