In the wake of the 2013 Eurovision voting scandal, the EBU has upped its transparency. This year it revealed the jury-televote split almost immediately after the contest. We already know that the EBU had to throw out Georgia’s jury results after it emerged that its five independent jurors had ranked their Top 8 acts identically. We’ve already taken one dig into the results—see our earlier analysis here. Now we’re digging in again. This time we’re seeing interesting patterns emerging with the jury votes in Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Montenegro.
First let’s look at the votes from Israel, a country that clearly has no friends in Eurovision. The independence of the five Israeli jurors (A, B, C, D, E) is rather clear, as they demonstrate a wide spread in their votes.
The countries are listed across the bottom. On the left you can see the ranking for the country from 1st to 26th. Each dot is that juror’s vote for that country. If you see less than 5 dots in a column, then several jurors gave the same ranking to that country. For instance, there is only one dot in Azerbaijan’s rankings for Armenia. That is because every single juror ranked Armenia last.
You see close agreement for Austria and Sweden, which is understandable. For the rest of the countries there is a pretty good spread. If you’d like more precise numbers, you can pull down the full vote results.
From the independence of Israel we turn to the rather suspicious results in Azerbaijan, Belarus and Montenegro. The consistency with which jurors voted seems like much more than a coincidence.
In fact, they appear to show collusion. I don’t see how, even if you get 5 people with identical taste in music, that they can, across 25 countries, differ by, at most, 3 points for almost every act. Maybe they all will closely agree on their favorite 5. And their least favorite 5. But how do you get agreement on number’s 8 – 18?
And finally, per wiwiblogger Mike Bos:
Estonia’s voting was the best. I think all their points did go to countries in the top 11 (they only forgot Denmark in the ninth place) they gave points to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 and 11
And yet, even with a result that clearly matches the continent wide results, there is still a significant spread in the votes for all the acts except 4. No Scandinavian bias. No East Bloc bias. Kudos to Estonia.
I also wonder what the EBU’s statistical analysis consists of when they accepted the questionable grouping shown above. Releasing the raw votes is a great first step. But disallowing juries needs to be more than just Georgia’s case where the votes are completely identical. I think the EBU may need some help with this.
What do y’all think? Do the results point toward collusion between Azerbaijan, Belarus and Montenegro?
Photo Credit: screenshot of final broadcast from EBU YouTube channel.
Ban Israel from Eurovision. Countries that are killing innocent people and occupy territory and behave like no humans shouldn’t participate in contest that unites Europe. I’m sorry for (some) Israeli fans, but that country is so mean and shouldn’t be seen more in Eurovision.
Seriously i’ve been looking at a few comments on here about how corrupt these nations are and how bad they are and how we should kick them out of eurovision for having bad human right records and yet loads of people don’t have problems with countries with bad human right records such as Israel, double standards from most of you really.
@Ismail – thank you for the open minded response.
Ismail sen kimsen bilmirem ama onu bilki menim ingilicemde problem ola biler en azi senin kimi insanliqimda problem olmadiqina emin ola bilersen menim vecimde deyil kim kenardan meni nece gorur derk edir onsuzda bunlar yaxsiya pis demeye adet edibler birdeki artiq onlara yaltaqliq edib ozunkulere artiq eskik demekle nese deyismeyecek sene el calmayacaqlar emin ol bu sayitda artiq anti azerbaycan siyaseti gedir ve buna artiq azerbaycanda dur demelidir yoxsa burda erevisiondan cox siyaset danisilir. birdeki eger oz hemyerlilerive iradin varsa oz dilinde yaza bilersen senin ingiliscen mukkemmel ola biler bununla oyunmekdense bir az insan ol hec bir ermeni senin kimi… Read more »
In the interests of full disclosure, I am Azerbaijani. First of all, I would like to call my countrymen and women not to trash the messengers in bad English. This is a very misplaced conduit for patriotism. You make us all sound and look insane and angry. And that does disservice to our people, especially in the eyes of our neighbors in Europe. I am not at all surprised, and neither should I be. Who are we kidding, Azerbaijani jurors voting independently is as much of a sci-fi notion as the Azerbaijani elections being conducted in a transparent fashion. We… Read more »
Estonia “no East bloc bias” ???? Estonia ranked Russia 24th and Latvia ranked Russia 25th !! this was a totally political vote. But you don’t write that.
On the other hand you congratulate Estonia for the way they voted.
SHAME!
dear wiwi for example it http://wiwibloggs.com/2013/05/20/lithuanian-press-did-azerbaijan-buy-votes-at-eurovision/27267/ are you sure this video is true and they are from azerbaijan in this video. but you are posting this stupid news but you are really don’t know are they azeris or not. may be another stupid people have made such bad video about azerbaijan and it is not true but you don’t think it and posting this news because it is not good for azerbaijan. i thinK Azerbaijan must speak with you and your Anti- AZERBAIJAN problem……. good bye anti azerbaijan wiwi bloggs!!!!! i think you use from azerbaijan for your site rating
I want to add to Will’s comment – there’s more to find. The raw vote numbers are a gold mine! And please, any additional suggestions on where to look – please let us know.
How many other bloggers noticed this? Maybe you should get with the other bloggers on Eurovision sites without attitude and send your findings to the EBU. Put enough pressure on the EBU to make them punish cheating countries equally, without regard on how successful the country is in Eurovision.
Thank you Armenia a lot that you gave Austria big 0 point….Azerbaijan gave 1 point to austria but armenia 0.
…..and you think that Austria”s song deserved to win,That means Azerbaijan have good music taste….
-Azerbaijan-Never Mind
Again about Azerbaijan and the news is very ridicilous !! i pity you and shame who posted such a funny news. Let alone, why you didn’t write about armenian votes or others?? Pls try to learn being human.
I am suspicious of the Armenian jury. They had Austria second last, Hungary third last, Sweden fourth last and Ukraine fifth last. That was all the favorites before the contest. I can’t help but think, that the Armenian jury was told (or agreed) to vote these countries down to promote their own winning chances. Also, the jury members, almost also voted the same.
Hi guys.
Listen the message is simple. Russia and Azerbaijan need to pull out and say goodbye. To compensate, bring back Andorra, Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Croatia, Serbia, Monaco and Bosnia Herzegovina.
Where a country is found to have a suspect jury result, the EBU should require the number of jurors to increase to 10 for that country. With 10 members it is even more unlikely they will come up with the same preferences.
The EBU looks at the 10 juror’s preference & selects the 5 which will make up the final vote. If all 10 are too similar, the jury is disregarded like Georgia this year.
@dilara – look at the votes. We’re not anti-Azeri, we’re just displaying the votes. The problem here is that the Azeri (and Belarus & Montenegro) jurors clearly colluded. Don’t shoot the messenger.
News from Israeli jurors and Colorado?
Hmmm… It must be Mossad, I guess…!!!
Mackenna of Langley, wasn’t Colorado dead?
dear wiwi you are again bad and Discussions news about azerbaijan why you are always posting anti AZERBAIJAN news what is your problem, your news always about such azerbaijan bought votes, Azerbaijan corruption azerbaijan bought song by sweden composer, i think you must change name of your site it must be wiwi anti-azerbaijan blogg then it will be real name of your site. if your news is not right but you must answer to azerbaijan ok!! and you are always wipe azeri comments but never wipe another bad comments about azerbaijan i think you are not rightness it is a… Read more »
What did u expect from countries like Azerbaijan and Belarus? Remember that last year there was an incident when Azerbaijani jury gave 0 to Russia and the Russian PM complained! Also, the Azeri broadcaster claimed that it was EBU’s mistake. What kind of fucked up dictatorship. I hope Conchita’s victory made them reconsider their Eurovision participation but unfortunately i believe Azerbaijan will stay and maybe Russia as well. Montenegro definitely cheated, it’s quite obvious. I wonder why EBU didn’t cancel their votes. Seriously, we need some explanations. Also, why don’t they post how many people voted in each country like… Read more »
I think: Maybe they should use more jury members (10 or 12 instead of 5). It would help to make cheating more obvious? Could somebody please suggest this to EBU?
Agree with Leon. In quite a few countries juries gave among last places while televoting gave among firsts. There is enough ground for disqualifying the juries from those countries.
If the audience votes them among firsts where the jury comes from? Papua?
i wonder how the result will look like if the jury result from these countries are scrapped? anyone?
gotta give it to azerbaijan tho. they’re really good haha.
Well Belgian jury gave Armenia the last place, every single one of them, whereas the public gave it the first place. They definitely planned that too. So, it’s not just eastern countries cheating. This just goes to show that juries have been given too much power
No matter how much the EBU tries to avoid voting irregularities and to control the whole process, when it come to a certain specific group of countries, punishment like the one Georgia undertook would never be taken seriously. And for the EBU there is a matter of interests here: they want to make sure that popular ESC countries like Ukraine, Greece, Russia or Azerbaijan remain in the competition (there is huge interest in the show and ratings here matter) no matter how awful their entries may be, their status in Eurovision is unstoppable. Greece and Azerbaijan may have flopped big… Read more »
I agree with the other posters who said to not allow them to have juries but I think it should be taken further. Allow them to compete, but to lose all voting privileges, including televote. This would be a penalty to the broadcasters who allow the cheating to happen since they wouldn’t be able to collect revenue from televotes.
The EBU will do nothing about this, as per usual.
Azerbaijan and Belarus are reported every year for cheating and being political, yet every year they are in the final. Its starting to make me sick!!!
If this was Portugal or Ireland or any other Eurovision country that has nothing to offer the EBU then they would have a 3 year ban!
This is such an abuse of trust, power and fair play that it actually amounts to plain and simple sabotage. There is no way around it and it would be self-defeating to accept it as coincidental.
I would like to see at least 10 jury members instead of the current 5 which include 5 males and 5 females forming 5 pairs of one male and one female from each of the following age groups: 18-30, 30-40, 40-50, 50-60 & 60+
The 5 member jury formula used at this point doesn’t have strict enough criterions to avoid coercion!
No surprises yet again.. Countries that don’t practice any form of democracy ..
Juries need to be judged for the correlation of results. Two coefficients, Jury/ Tele-vote and Jury/ Final standing. If two (or three) of the worst scoring jury-members are not eligible for the national jury the next (five) years it would reward and incentivise jurors to give a more balanced scorecard.
Maybe award top juror prize for the best individual prediction.
To the Author; Put the countries in order where the are ranked by results left to right. In that way variance can be superimposed and changes in different ranked blocs can more easily be found.
Hi Timselvision
Yes, Belarus, Russia and Azerbaijan should be permanently disqualified. They’re politicizing Eurovision and making it less fun for other countries. Look at Georgia, they are looking at 3 years disqualification for a similar reason to Montenegro, Belarus and Azerbaijan and this is only their 1st offence. Azerbaijan and Russia have politicized the contest countless times in the past and they are still here. That is TOTALLY unfair on Georgia’s part.
I am only being realistic here.
Please get back to me ASAP. 😀 😀
Great work David. I re-blogged your article cause I want everyone to read it. What will the EBU do? Nothing. They will sit on their hands and be oblivious to everything.
I don´t think these countries should be bannished. Indeed, it´s cheating, but they have good songs. And how more countries, how more ESC. My thoughts anyway. Indeed, they cheat, I don´t deny that! But punish them on another way. No juries for next year or something for that countries. “That sounds good for me,” in the words of Josh Dubovie.
I have a question in to Jon Ola Sands & Sietse Bakker.
Maybe one of the bloggers from this site? (They are all so cool, you know)
Could somebody please post this to EBU?
The Armenian voting is quite suspicous as well…
I have a great solution for this problem!
Why doesn’t the EBU punish these countries by only letting them vote by their televoting in 2015? I’m so great.
Montenegro, I am disappointed – I did not expect that from you. As for Azerbaijan and Belarus this does not surprise me at all and I hope the EBU will be giving you firm warnings. And now I’m glad it can be clear how the former USSR countries did so well, and it is re-assuring that only 3 countries (plus Georgia?) cheated. It’s just so embarrassing that they have to do this in order to do well. Now all we need is an analysis of the Azerbaijani-Maltese televotes!
Hi guys Russia may be pulling out of Eurovision 2015. Like the Russians, Belarus and Azerbaijan should just pull out, say goodbye and leave the rest of Europe alone. Everyone is sick and tired of those 3 countries pushing their luck politically and getting away with it year after year, contest after contest. A withdrawal from Russia, Azerbaijan and Belarus is necessary. It is also not my problem if they withdraw. To compensate, bring back Slovakia, Monaco, Andorra, Czech Republic but especially Luxembourg and Bosnia Herzegovina. PS: I don’t know if I want Kazakhstan in the Eurovision. They’ll give 12… Read more »
Yes, David, good job. Send this to the EBU. It wouldn’t change a think I guess, but there hopefully is awareness.
You have to take a look at the jury results of San Marino. In semi final 1 Netherlands got 12 points, Azerbaijan ended up only in 6th place. In the final suddenly Azerbaijan gets 12 points and NL became 9th. Strange?
What about Germany? That’s one fishy jury vote, y’all!
the moldovan jury all voted romania as #1
i am surprised no one is raising any eyebrows 😮
It was nice to see the UK finish above Azerbaijan for the first time.
what the ebu need to do is get rid of the jurys, they do no good the countries that used to be accused of political voting are still f-ing doing it.
@Kyle LOL 🙂
Will you make EBU aware of this? I think you should. Writing about it here is good, but it won’t change anything.
Azerbaijan…again.
Seriously…no one took the opportunity to say “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”???
Yep, especially Azerbaijan’s and Belarus’ diagram shows clear back door jury agreement. As far for the votes for Armenia, it wouldn’t matter if the juries in either Armenia or Azerbaijan gave the respective entries even the first place because the public voted last as well. So, it doesn’t make a difference in overall vote.
Voting of the Azerbaijani jury is not about the musical taste – it’s about politics, nationalism and hatred that comes from those two. When some people in Azerbaijan voted for Armenia several years ago, they were summoned to the police station to explain themselves. Any juror not placing Armenia last would be seen as suspicious and not enough “patriotic” (in their minds the logic is something like this: “Hate for Armenia = Love for Azerbaijan”) which is why any juror placing Armenia 25th would have ended up in a police station. Their voting when it comes to Armenia is always… Read more »