Adrian Kavanagh's Blog

Adrian Kavanagh, 16 May 2011

Eurovision televoting blocs

Despite our good result on Saturday night, there has again been some disgruntlement at the impact of what is perceived to be bloc voting, but actually amounts to a combination of geographical (or classic “friends and neighbours”) voting and diaspora voting. Analysis I did on televoting patterns by different Eurovision countries in past contests suggests the existence of different voting blocs that tend to especially favour certain countries in Eurovision contests and from which other bloc members will expect to poll their greatest number of votes by and large. These different blocs – Western European-Diaspora, Former Soviet-Orthodox, Former Yugoslav, Iberian and Nordic – are described in the above map.

So how did these blocs vote in this year’s contest? This post will briefly look at average votes won across different blocs for all the countries competing in last Saturday’s final. (more…)

Adrian Kavanagh, 16th May 2011

Congratulations to Jedward and their team on a great perfromance in Dusseldorf and a great result in taking 8th place for Ireland in the final (and also the semi final, proving earlier point that getting out of the semi final would be as difficult as doing well in the final!) They also won the Artistic Award (voted on by all commentators at the Eurovision) and were thankfully very sedate when they received it…NOT!

In the previous post, I suggested that Azerbaijan would win the contest if based on past voting history and voting patterns of the 43 countries (or rather 42 countries, as Italy could not be included due to returning to the contest this year after a 13 year absence) during the televoting era (1998-2010). Comparing the predicted results based on voting history with the actual results could give us a glimpse of what the actual results might have been once the bloc (or rather, geographical/diaspora) voting dimension was discounted. (more…)

Adrian Kavanagh, 13th May 2011

In terms of working out who may win this year’s Eurovision (and hopefully making a few bob in the process) various factors can be looked at, but the three most significant ones are the Eurovision betting odds, past voting histories involving the contestants and the countries voting in the contest, and draw position. (more…)

Adrian Kavanagh, 13th May 2011

There’s no use trying to argue that this is nothing other than a fairly lousy draw, given that acts draw to perform in the earlier stages of Eurovision finals generally tend to do worse than those on later – just as the ate draw worked for us in the semi final this earlier draw can’t help our Eurovision hopes. It is not as bad as the No. 2 draw of course, which fell to the luckless Dino Merlin of Bosnia who had already had to perform at the No. 1 position in Thursday’s semi final, or the No. 3 draw, which would seriously millitate against the Danish hopes. But the Irish draw position becomes worse when you consider that it is towards the start of an uptempo song road-block in the earlier part of the draw, stretching from the No.5 draw position to the No.10 draw position – there is a similar slower tempo/ballad road block in the later part of the draw stretching from the No.18 draw position effectively to the No.23 position (with Spain in No.22 breaking this sequence).

The EBU has just released jury vote and televote details for the recent Eurovision Song Contest final and two semi finals, which throw up some interesting findings. These details can be now viewed on the official Eurovision webpage. In this post, I will analyse these figures. (more…)