Poll Results: Al Mike & Renee Santana Should Win Romania’s Selectia Nationala

The poll is closed and the results are in! As expected, Al Mike and Renee Santana, who have proved most popular with foreigners in other Eurovision polls across the Internet, are your favorites to win Romania’s Selectia Nationala with the dance track “What Is Love”.

The duo, made up of Romanian music producer Mihai Alexandru and Carlos Santana’s Mexican grand-niece Renee, earned 30% of all votes. They likely benefited from the backing vocals of Station 4 (dubbed “the Romanian One Direction”). Hopefully they’ll get the same support from the Romanian voters. They certainly have the jury’s vote: It saved them from elimination in the second semi-final. Hopefully, they will prevail again!

Second on your list of favorites is Luminita Anghel with 18%. The Eurovision veteran announced that she has revamped her show into a James Bond themed extravaganza. She is rumored to be the jury’s favorite to win, seeing as she already proved that she can face the Eurovision pressure at the international level. Don’t be surprised if she does.

Cezar, who has been promoting his song relentlessly with countless TV and radio appearances and interviews over the past two weeks, is third in your preferences with 14%. His pop opera song “It’s My Life” is also expected to make an impression in the Final. After being ridiculed for his hastily put together show in the semi-final (Cezar only decided to participate in the Selectia Nationala at the very last minute), the famous countertenor hired a team of top-notch specialists and fashion designers for his performance. Hopefully, he will deliver not only vocally, but visually as well.

Poll Results

1. Al Mike and Renee Santana – What Is Love 71 votes, 28.98%
2. Luminita Anghel – Unique 45, 18.37%
3. Cezar – It’s My Life 34, 13.88%
4. Electric Fence – Emilia 29, 11.84%
5. Andrei Leonte – Paralyzed 15, 6.12%
6. Elena Carstea Muttart – Spinning 15, 6.12%
7. Tudor Turcu – Hello 10, 4.08%
8. Freestay – Criminal Mind 9, 3.67%
9. Cristian Prajescu – The Best Thing In Life Is To Love 7, 2.86%
10. Narcis Iustin Ianau – Seven 5, 2.04%
11. Ovidiu Anton – Run Away With Me 4, 1.63%
12. Casa Presei – Un refren 1, 0.41%

Note how one sympathy vote was cast for Casa Presei… However, we should expect the results of the Romanian televoting to be very different. Casa Presei, with the only Romanian language song in the final, “Un refren”, and teen countertenor Narcis Ianau, with “Seven”, are expected to take the lead, just as they did in their respective semi-finals. Nonetheless, the jury is very likely to overturn these results – but as to which song is going to emerge as the winner, it’s anyone’s guess.

As for the show itself, we should expect the “Romanian ABBA” to confront special guests Boney M, Paula Seling and Ovi to perform their 2010 Eurovision hit “Playing With Fire”, and… surprise, surprise, Belarusian diva Alyona Lanskaya will sing her controversially picked entry for Eurovision 2013 “Solayoh” during the Romanian Selectia Nationala Final. She hasn’t performed it in public even in Belarus, so we can talk of an exclusive premiere. She is said to bring four dancers, which would only leave room for one backing vocalist, so it is going to be interesting to see how the song actually sounds like live.

So tune in tomorrow evening for a Romanian Selectia Nationala Final to remember. The show will start half an hour earlier, at 19:30 CET, with a warm-up show with backstage images, and it will be broadcast live on TVR, but also online at eurovision.tvr.ro and eurovision.tv. As usual, the show will be followed by a live debate about this year’s contest, called “Dopo Festival”. I’ll be in the Green Room for the entire show and I’ll report live, in English, at @stingoo on Twitter, for those of you who don’t speak Romanian. Follow me!