Adrian Kavanagh, 13th June 2012
The German Eurovision website, eurovision.de, has today revealed how the Irish Eurovision jury voted in this year’s semi final and final and throws up some interesting trends.
Figure 1: Irish jury votes and actual votes for the 2012 Eurovision Final
In the Eurovision Final the Irish jury gave its highest points to Estonia, followed by Germany, Sweden, Ukraine and Italy (Figure 1). By and large, there are no surprises with most of these given that the style of the Estonian, German and Italian songs were such that these were likely to be more popular with the juries. The high ranking awarded Ukraine’s mid-ranking up-tempo song is perhaps somewhat out of kilter with this trend. Denmark, usually a favourite of the Irish jury, ranked lowly this year in the jury vote and failed to win any actual votes, suggesting the Danish song fared even more poorly amongst the Irish televoters. No details as yet are provided on how the Irish televoters voted, but a comparison between the jury votes and the actual Irish votes would suggest that countries such as Lithuania, Russia, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Romania and Germany did well in the Irish televote.
Figure 2: Irish jury votes and actual votes in the (First) 2012 Eurovision semi final
Belgium won the Irish jury vote in the semi final, ahead of Romania, Finland, Greece and Cyprus. It’s interesting to note that there was a decidedly more uptempo feel to the Irish jury vote in the semi final than it was in the final. Again no details have been provided on televote patterns, but comparisons between jury and actual votes suggest Belgium and Finland fared poorly in the televote (possibly winning no points here) while Russia did very well (possibly even winning the Irish televote or coming second in this to Romania). As well as Russia and Romania, a comparison between the Irish jury vote and actual vote in the semi final suggests that countries such as Greece, Latvia, Moldova and Denmark also fared well amongst the Irish televoters in this semi final.
While Belgium and Finland failed to progress to the final and hence were not in a position to be voted on by the Irish jury in that contest, Romania was the only one of the countries attaining the higher ranks with the Irish jury to also win votes off the jury in the final, but while ranked in second place by the jury in the semi final the Romanian entry found itself ranked in 7th place amongst the Irish jury come the final, falling behind a number of Semi Final 2 qualifiers (Estonia, Sweden, Ukraine) and Big 5/Host entries (Germany, Italy, Azerbaijan). Denmark, although only ranked in 6th place by the Irish jury in the semi final, found itself being more favoured that the higher ranked Greek and Cypriot entries come the final and was the only other Semi Final 1 entry to win votes off the Irish jury in that contest.
Awarding high points to countries that traditionally would not be viewed as part of Ireland’s Eurovision (Nordic) voting bloc, such as Azerbaijan and Ukraine in the Final and Greece and Cyprus in the Semi Final, the Irish jury could note be accused of voting in line what would be expected of bloc voting (diaspora/friends and neighbours voting) and indeed went to the extreme of failing to award any points at all to the entry from its nearest neighbour, and indeed most loyal Eurovision “friend”, the United Kingdom!
Tags: Eurovision, Voting
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