Adrian Kavanagh's Blog

Adrian Kavanagh, 12th March

We know the ten countries that qualified out of Eurovision Semi Final 1 (with the Top 6 countries in this semi-final accounting for six of the countries that finished in the Top 7!) but would the result have been different if it had been solely based on a jury vote or solely based on the televote/jury vote?

The results of Semi Final 1 were as follows: 1. The Netherlands 150, 2. Sweden 131, 3. Hungary 127, 4. Armenia 121, 5. Ukraine 118, 6. Russia 63, 7. Montenegro 63, 8. Iceland 61, 9. Azerbaijan 57, 10. San Marino 40, 11. Portugal 39, 12. Estonia 36, 13. Latvia 33, 14. Belgium 28, 15. Albania 22, 16. Moldova 15.   

Had the result of Semi Final 1 been solely based on jury voting, the result would have read as follows:

1. The Netherlands 130, 2. Sweden 125, 3. Hungary 123, 4. Armenia 102, 5.  Azerbaijan 94, 6. Ukraine 89, 7. Montenegro 72,  8. Iceland 68, 9. Albania 64, 10. Estonia 61, 11. Russia 57, 12. Latvia 27, 13. San Marino 26, 14. Belgium 24, 16. Moldova 23, 11. Portugal 17 . 

Had the result of Semi Final 1 been solely based on the public vote/televote, the result would have read as follows (note that the televotes in Albania, Moldova, San Marino and Montenegro were not used due to technical issues or insufficient number of votes – their jury votes would have been used instead in this instance):

1. The Netherlands 147, 2. Hungary 125, 2. Sweden 122,  4. Armenia 121, 5. Ukraine 119, 6. Russia 73, 7. Portugal 72, 8. San Marino 58, 9. Iceland 50, 10. Montenegro 43, 11J. Azerbaijan/Belgium 41, 13. Latvia 40, 14. Albania 23, 15. Moldova 14, 16. Estonia 13.  

Despite the fact that jury votes would still have accounted for over one-fifth of the televote score, had this semi-final been decided purely on the public vote, there are more notable differences between the jury and public vote scores in this semi-final than was the case for Semi-Final 2. Looking at these figures, it can been seen that a very low jury vote score cost Portugal a place in the Eurovision Final (at the expense of Azerbaijan), while Estonia and Albania would have qualified for the Final (instead of Russia and San Marino) had the jury vote score instead determined the Final qualifiers. There were some surprises evident in these voting patterns:

• Belgium would appear to have had a very jury-friendly song this year, but their chances were killed in particular by a very low jury vote score – and a particularly low score from the Western European voting juries. By contrast, the entry from Iceland scored highly with the voting juries (and particularly the West European juries – being ranked as the best act by the Dutch jury and the second best act by the French jury) despite this act have much less of merit than a number of the other acts in that semi-final.
• Azerbaijan, who finished in the Top 5 at each of the Eurovision Finals between 2009 and 2013, would have missed the Final had it been solely based on the televotes, despite having (in my opinion) one of their best songs/artists over the past few years.
• Despite not having won at Eurovision, or having come close to doing so, since 1975, The Netherlands comfortably won both the jury vote and televote at this semi-final. Although perhaps not that surprising given the quality of the song/act and the excellent position in the running order, but it does show that a series of bad results in the past does not prohibit a country from doing well at, or even winning, Eurovision if they get their song/act/performance right.

Tags: Eurovision, Voting

This entry was posted on May 12, 2014 at 11:26 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.