Adrian Kavanagh's Blog

Who are countries likely to give the big points to in tonight’s Final? The table below presents the likely suspects for each of the countries voting tonight in the order that they have been scheduled to present their votes tonight, based on these countries’ patterns of Eurovision Song Contest voting since the introduction of televoting in 1998. This analysis just looks at voting patterns for the 26 countries taking part in tonight’s final and it must be noted that some of the countries listed below would traditionally give higher points levels to other countries that may have been eliminated this year at the semi-final stage (as is very much the case with The Former Yugoslav voting bloc) or to countries that are not taking part in this year’s contest (such as Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Portugal).

A full outline of the usual voting patterns of all these countries (including losing semi-finalists in this year’s contest and countries that did not take part in 2013) may be viewed in The 2013 Eurovision Handbook, which is still available in e-book format at the price of €2.99 with all profits from this going to the Irish Cancer Society.

http://johnnyfallon.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/please-support-eurovision-handbook-in-aid-of-irish-cancer-society/

So the following table identifies the four countries from this year’s group of 26 finalists that have won the highest average points from each of the 39 voting countries in previous contests since the introduction of televoting in 1998:

Watch out for countries that are consistently getting high votes from countries that they would not traditionally win high points from – this would suggest that these countries are well on course to do very well in this year’s Final! Compare the actual points given tonight with the trends suggested by this table as the early round of voting proceeds and this may give some early indications as to who the likely winner will be. For instance, if Ukraine is seen to be winning big points from the first six countries to present their votes, this could be indicative that Gravity by Zlata Ognevich is a serious contender to win this year’s contest given that the table above suggests that Ukraine does not traditionally win (the very) big points from the six countries concerned. By contrast, when one looks at the countries who will be presenting their votes first, it should not be that surprising if countries such as Greece and Armenia figures among the early leaders.

The order in which countries present has, in recent years, been selected in such a way as to make for the most exciting voting process possible. In this vein, it is perhaps indicative that a large number of Former Yugoslav/Balkan countries figure amongst the last group of countries to present their votes tonight, possibly reflecting a view that it may well be the votes of countries from this region that decides tonight’s winner especially after most of these countries were eliminated in the semi-finals.

This entry was posted on May 18, 2013 at 10:27 am and is filed under Eurovision. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.