Adrian Kavanagh, 26th May 2012
Other than song quality and the impact of song contest performances, there are two key factors that may impact on a country’s result in a Eurovision song contest – their ability to draw on reliable support from either “friends and neighbours” or diaspora voting and the position their act will be performing in at that contest. In this post, I will look at these factors and tease out what these might mean in terms of the points this year’s Eurovision finalists might hope to win based on these factors.
Friends and neighbours voting/diaspora voting: During the televoting era, countries have shown a remarkable consistency in terms of the other countries that they vote for. This is probably most evident in the case of Greece and Cyprus’s tendency to award each other douze points in Eurovision contests and more recently in terms of the voting relationship between Turkey and Azerbaijan. Similar trends can be observed for most other European contestants, including Ireland who showed a remarkable consistency during the “full-blown” televoting era in awarding its high Eurovision points to Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and the United Kingdom as well as to Denmark and Sweden, especially from 2005 onwards. Such has been the consistency in Eurovision countries’ voting patterns during the 2000s that one can easily suggest the existence of different, geographically-based, voting blocs, which tend to award especially high numbers of points to certain countries (not necessarily always other bloc members) and from which bloc members can expect to attain their highest Eurovision points tallies. The impact of such “bloc voting” has been tempered in recent years by the reintroduction of a professional jury voting element as part of a 50-50 voting system involving televoting and jury votes. But given that televoting still accounts for half of the total votes being awarded by countries, past voting histories of countries will give a strong indicator as to the destination of their Eurovision votes in the 2012 Final, and also suggests that some countries – due to an ability to score highly within one, or more, Eurovision voting blocs – will start the contest at somewhat of an advantage to countries such as France, Ireland, Spain, Cyprus and the United Kingdom, who have struggled to win the big Eurovision points over the past decade and half.
To analyse this, I studied, and ranked, the average number of points awarded by the 42 countries (the 26 finalists and 16 unlucky semi-finalists) since the introduction of televoting in 1998 to the 26 countries that are taking part in this year’s final. This is to determine which countries that country is likely to award their 12 points, 10 points…and 1 point to in this year,s contest. Hence, in the case of Ireland, the Irish 12 points vote is expected to go to Lithuania (with an average points tally of 8.3 from Ireland over the years), the 2012 finalist that has enjoyed the highest average support level from France in Eurovision contests, followed by Denmark (7.3 points average) who get awarded 10 points, United Kingdom (5.2) who get awarded 8 points…and so on. The predicted points destination for all the other 41 voting countries are estimated in a similar manner. Once the points are combined, the final points tallies for the competing countries in the 2012 Final, based on past voting history, are predicted as follows:
- United Kingdom 39
- Hungary 66
- Albania 71
- Lithuania 43
- Bosnia and Herzegovina 136
- Russia 139
- Iceland 70
- Cyprus 32
- France 3
- Italy 180
- Estonia 52
- Norway 116
- Azerbaijan 220
- Romania 100
- Denmark 96
- Greece 188
- Sweden 133
- Turkey 151
- Spain 32
- Germany 47
- Malta 43
- FYR Macedonia 68
- Ireland 24
- Serbia 159
- Ukraine 160
- Moldova 78
The figures above offers a prediction as to the number of points that countries would win if solely based on the previous voting patterns of the 42 countries which will be voting in tonight’s Final. Interestingly, on the basis of these figures alone we would be returning again to Baku for next year’s Eurovision.
Eyes on the prize again? Azerbaijan’s Sabina Babayeva
However it is worth noting that these figures will be skewed in favour of successful countries who have recently joined, or returned to, the contest – an obvious case here would be Azerbaijan who only entered Eurovision for the first time back in 2008 and have managed Top 10 results in all of these contests, but Italy (ranked second) would be an even starker example in that Italy has only competed in one contest since 1997 and this was a contest that Italy finished second in (mainly due to an exceptionally high vote from the voting juries). Leaving those concerns aside, these figures here do underpin the fact that past voting histories do give certain countries a significant advantage in terms of winning points in Eurovision contests, as well as of course in terms of being able to qualify for finals.
The strong concentration of “new” Eurovision countries amongst the top echelons here is readily evident (as well as the number of Eastern European countries) – indeed some of the high ranked countries only have a small number of Eurovision contests “under their belts” and it could be argued that their points tally as such reflects the fact that they have not been in sufficient contests for their high tallies to be offset by lower points tallies in less successful contests for these countries. The absence of Armenia from the 2012 contest also has an impact in that a number of countries (notably Turkey, Azerbaijan, Greece and Serbia) are picking up more ‘diaspora’ votes from Western European countries, such as Germany and France, that they might have expected to as indeed happened in last year’s final when Armenia and Turkey were not in competition.
That said, with jury voting and with the potential for very strong songs/performances to impact on televoters, it is possible for countries to defy their past voting histories and attain results that are very much against the run of what would have been expexted on their previous pattern of results. This has already been evident in this year’s contest – voting histories suggested low semi final rankings for countries such as Cyprus, Lithuania and Ireland, but all these countries succeeded in making it to this year’s final. So voting history/bloc voting is only one element of the different factors that help determine a Eurovision winner, or even a strong Eurovision result/high placing.
Draw position: As noted in an earlier post, vote patterns for past contests suggest that a country’s draw position can (in part) determine how well they do in that contest, with certain positions in the draw (generally later) associated with a stronger likelihood of success/higher average points level as against other draw positions (generally those in the earlier part of the show). A late Eurovision draw position offers a competing country a distinct advantage, as indeed proves to be the case for Jedward this year. But there are subtle variants within different parts of the draw. In the earlier part of the draw entries drawn in the 5th, 7th, 8th and 1st draw positions have done significantly better than those drawn in the 2nd (the veritable draw of death), 4th, 9th and 6th positions. Similarly in the latter part of the draw, it is evident that a draw position near the end, but not at the end, is the most advantageous draw to get. It is better to be on three songs before the end than in the very last draw position – a notable difference from the trend for semi-finals in which the last draw position proved to be the most advantageous (possibly due to the generally smaller number of countries in a semi-final – the 2007 marathon semi final being a notable exception). Based solely on draw position we would be off to Madrid for the 2012 contest – the 2011 results would read as follows:
- United Kingdom 76
- Hungary 45
- Albania 64
- Lithuania 48
- Bosnia and Herzegovina 101
- Russia 63
- Iceland 97
- Cyprus 78
- France 67
- Italy 123
- Estonia 110
- Norway 100
- Azerbaijan 80
- Romania 93
- Denmark 76
- Greece 90
- Sweden 104
- Turkey 134
- Spain 95
- Germany 105
- Malta 124
- FYR Macedonia 90
- Ireland 114
- Serbia 145
- Ukraine 97
- Moldova 115
It is notable that in the bulk of cases draw positions are not conveying an unsurpassable advtantage, with not much more than 40 points separating the countries ranked between 4th and 20th place, although the significant advantage of a later draw and disadvantage of an earlier draw (especially draw position No. 2) become readily apparent here.
If the predicted points based on voting history and draw positions are combined the following result for the 2011 Final might be predicted:
- United Kingdom 52
- Hungary 56
- Albania 67
- Lithuania 46
- Bosnia and Herzegovina 119
- Russia 101
- Iceland 84
- Cyprus 55
- France 35
- Italy 152
- Estonia 81
- Norway 108
- Azerbaijan 150
- Romania 97
- Denmark 86
- Greece 139
- Sweden 119
- Turkey 142
- Spain 64
- Germany 76
- Malta 84
- FYR Macedonia 79
- Ireland 69
- Serbia 152
- Ukraine 128
- Moldova 97
Leaving aside performance impact and song, it can be seen that a number of countries are starting the contest at a serious advantage/disadvantage based on their draw in tonight’s final and their past voting Eurovision history. A number of countries are advantaged by regular history of voting support due to friends and neighbours voting and others, including Ireland, will hope to benefit from a great draw position, but there are some countries in this Final such as Serbia, Italy, Sweden, Ukraine, Turkey and Greece who benefit from both draw and past voting history and this will help them greatly in their hopes to win this year’s contest.
Tags: Eurovision, Voting
Adrian Kavanagh's Blog 
May 30, 2012 at 9:10 am |
[…] 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 […]