We need your help. All signs seem to suggest that jury votes from Montenegro were pre-determined, and that the five “independent” jurors were following a similar script. But why? We have called in every fictional detective we know and none of them can figure out Montenegro’s motives. Now we need you, dear readers, to summon your inner Sherlock Holmes and help solve the mystery.
Here’s how the five members of Montenegro’s jury voted in the final. If you can’t see all five dots, that’s because the individual jurors’ rankings overlapped and they assigned the same country the same ranking. Rankings/placements are seen at left; the countries being rated and ranked are listed along the bottom.
For 23 of the 25 countries being ranked, all 5 jurors were within 4 votes of each other. This is not just the top 4 or 5 (selling first place). Nor is it just the last 4 or 5 (pulling an Armenia and punishing the favourites).
Vote Trading
The first place we looked was vote trading. Here’s Montenegro’s jury vote (ranking) and the jury vote they received from each country. For instance, Montenegro ranked San Marino sixth in the final, but San Marino ranked Montenegro 11th in the semi and 18th in the final.
| Country | Montenegro Jury | Semi | Final |
| Armenia | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Germany | 2 | 24 | |
| Hungary | 3 | 3 | 5 |
| Malta | 4 | 6 | |
| Italy | 5 | 14 | |
| San Marino | 6 | 11 | 18 |
| Poland | 7 | 21 | |
| Ukraine | 8 | 8 | 21 |
| Belarus | 9 | 21 | |
| Greece | 10 | 21 | |
| France | 11 | 8 | 11 |
| Switzerland | 12 | 21 | |
| Slovenia | 13 | 12 | |
| Denmark | 14 | 11 | 20 |
| Iceland | 15 | 9 | 15 |
| Sweden | 16 | 12 | 21 |
| Austria | 17 | 22 | |
| The Netherlands | 18 | 5 | 4 |
| Azerbaijan | 19 | 8 | 10 |
| Spain | 20 | 3 | 11 |
| Finland | 21 | 25 | |
| Romania | 22 | 19 | |
| Russia | 23 | 8 | 15 |
| United Kingdom | 24 | 21 | |
| Norway | 25 | 12 |
You can explain the #1 for Armenia with vote trading. And maybe Hungary and/or Malta. But that’s about it. I’m pretty sure you don’t offer Germany a #2 vote in return for a #24 vote from them. And if you’re cutting a deal with Malta, why would you give Germany a #2 above them?
Selling Votes
The next possibility to look at is selling votes. There’s a couple of problems with this theory. First off, why on earth would Germany and Italy buy votes? The entries they had this year were not going to win (Germany wasn’t going to break the top 10). And neither country has a history of making deals for jury votes.
In addition the jury votes were in lockstep for every single vote. By what logic would Spain pay to get the 20th place vote?
Groupthink
The jurors clearly discussed the acts and where to rank them beforehand. Could it be that in those discussions they reached consensus? Unlikely. The variety of the music ensures that individual taste will heavily influence an individual’s rating. Discussing one’s rating with others is not going to significantly shift that decision.
Bloc Voting
Eastern block votes were 3, 7, 8, 9, 13, 19, 22, 23 so those votes were spread all over the place. Again, not driving the votes.
Why?
So you tell us. What was driving them? What theory explains a lockstep vote not just for the first and last couple of entries, but also for places 11 – 19? Because something was driving this. This was not random.
Ridiculous. Sorry Montenegro.
@ESCaddict Yes, David is indeed capable of analyzing things, unlike you, who prefer to pull bs straight out of your own as*.
‘It would appear Armenia bought the Montenegro’s jury vote.. etbs.’
Damn))
There is nothing weird in Armenia awarding 12 points to Montenegro.If we look on the split results jury ranked Montenegro 2nd and public 4th so boath the public and the jury loved it.Thouse points were well deserved and I no other country did the same.On the other hands,Armenia had a brilliant song,and received 12 points from 3 countries,France,Austria and Montenegro,so Montenegro was “not alone” when it votted for Armenia.
Whoops, my reply should thank David who wrote the blog, not Tom.
Thank you Tom & WiwiBoggs for providing some analysis of the voting. Those who don’t like it should just f**k off.
It would appear Armenia bought the Montenegro’s jury vote so they got top points & voted down the other favourites. Second place Germany? Are you kidding?
EBU should put Montenegro on notice that if anything like this happens again their jury vote will be disregarded in a flash. Also juries should be increased to 10 members.
Is it not possible that Armenia was first, because the song was actually decent? I agree that something fishy occurred, but that doesn’t mean every action was fishy.
@Tom – talk to someone who understands statistics. There clearly was collusion by the jury members based on these results. (Or are you from Montenegro and trying to find some way to make this go away?)
This is getting out of hand! Why on Earth you continue writing bullshit like this and basically force more and more people to abandon Eurovision? You can’t explain some sort of made up conspiracy theory and you still find it necessary to post it? This site is getting ever so pathetic with some ridiculous post-Eurovision crap that nobody really cares about! Can’t you just enjoy the show, the music and cut the politics as year after year your ridiculous conspiracies are cut to pieces!?
EBU should have disqualified the jury of Montenegro, i wonder why they didn’t do it. This is ridiculous. I want Montenegro to leave the contest, we don’t need them cheating.
and yeah juries should stay but they should increase the number of jury members. 5 jury members will easier cheat whereas 10 or 11 won’t
when I read this kind of articles I think: this is SO embarrassing! Why does the EBU do NOTHING about it??? Really, it’s a real shame what’s happening in Eurovision…
they were right not to vote for conchita after what she was going to do to them
I personally believe (to those who’d like us to “let sleeping dogs lie”) that not paying attention to this goes hand in hand with not paying attention to all the utter tomfoolery and corruption in this already cracked world. No, ma’am!
We can’t have this kind of thing happening (and so blatantly at least this year, or at least this year the votes have been “disclosed” so clearly) and just brush it off as unimportant or irrelevant. Why? Because “it is only ESC”? No, ma’am!
I for one am glad Wiwibloggs is doing this and keeping tabs on whats going on. I don’t have an answer for you but I find if you follow the money, that’s a good bet you’ll find out why Montenegro did this. What ‘deals’ are going down between Montenegro and other countries? Doesn’t have to be music related, could be oil, gas, buildings, capitalism, etc. who knows? Look at who gained the most by this voting and then look in the business sections of each country’s involvement. See if their are any connections. Is Montenegro getting a new stadium? new… Read more »
how many of these kinds of articles do you guys plan to write? i think this is like the third ever since the show ended…
@Thiefo – exactly. The odds of this randomly happening are effectively zero. It’s like flipping a coin and having it land heads 25 times in a row – never going to happen unless there’s something controlling it.
Hungary come third in the montenegro jury voting in the final with 25 other songs, and then in the semi it can’t even make top 10 in a semi with only 15 other songs.
Bring back juries with 16 members in all countries like in 80 ties and 90 ties ,.
WIWIBLOGGS WE DON’T WANT JURIES.THEY ARE MORE CORRUPTED THAN PEOPLE!BRING BACK THE OLDER SYSTEM.MASSIVE TELEVOTING IS MORE SECURE THAN 5 COMPLEX LITTLE HUMAN BEINGS!
@Liam I also think that in some cases there must be coincidences and sometimes it’s all about us overthinking things and seeing ghosts where there are none… but on the other hand what are the odds of 5 different people ranking twenty-something songs almost identically? The probabilities of this being coincidence are really thin. Also @Willy, but if you’re right don’t you think it actually makes everything look even more suspicious? If they wanted to disguise a shady move all they did is to acentuate the fact something was definitely planned. They indeed masked it, because none of this makes… Read more »
Curve ball: it’s just a coincidence? I think this has just been read into too deeply… if none of the above titles were likely “driving” the Montenegrin votes, then I’d let it slide