After major concerns over voting fraud at last year’s Eurovision Song Contest, the EBU decided it was time to boost transparency. It released a full breakdown of both jury and televoting results immediately after this year’s broadcast.
How did politics affect this year’s voting? Were there any irregularities in any jury’s scores? Who benefited the most from the televote and the jury vote? What does this mean for Eurovision’s voting system going into 2015? Here are some key findings from this year’s results.
The real hate is between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
All members of the Armenian jury ranked Azerbaijan dead last. Azerbaijan was also last in the Armenian televoting. The Azeri people reciprocated, ranking Armenia last both in the jury vote and in the televoting. These results indicate that there are still tensions between the two countries stemming from their long-time conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Ukraine and Russia actually decided to focus on the music.
One would think after the annexation of Crimea, Ukraine and Russia would rank each other last amongst their juries. However, the exchange of points indicate that political tensions did not spill over into Eurovision. Russia awarded Ukraine 7 points (ranked sixth among the jury, forth in televoting), and Ukraine awarded Russia 4 points (ranked tenth among the jury, third in televoting).
Coordinated, manipulated voting apparent in Azeri and Belarussian juries.
The jurors nearly voted the same way for all 25 acts. When one looks at all five juror rankings for each country, there is little variability between each juror ranking. The Azeri/Belarussian rankings suggest that there was deliberate coordination. There is little to no probability that these similar rankings happened by chance. Here is a breakdown of the Azeri/Belarussian jury scores with averages and standard deviations. Note: the numbers in the columns indicate place ranking.
Considering both Azerbaijan and Belarus are countries with authoritarian governments, could jurors face coercion from their governments to vote a certain way?
Major rivalry exists between Scandinavian and ex-Soviet bloc states.
After the crumbling of the Balkan voting bloc in 2013, the two dominant voting blocs, the Scandinavian bloc and ex-Soviet bloc, attempt to destroy each other in this year’s contest – using both their national juries and televoters. Very few points were exchanged between the two voting blocs. As you can see below, both Scandinavian juries and televoters were anything but generous with their points. Note: the numbers in each column except “Points awarded” indicate place ranking.
The ex-Soviet juries and televoters also did not show much mercy to the Scandinavian acts. One exception is Ukraine’s 12 points to Sweden’s Sanna Nielsen.
When the juries were first introduced back in 2008, the intent was to prevent bloc voting. However, the breakdown of jury results for the Scandinavian and ex-Soviet voting blocs show otherwise. Ironically, national juries may be leveraging their own voting powers to revive bloc voting as a weapon against other countries rather aid to a neighboring country.
Eastern European juries are more conservative than their own people:
While Austria decisively won the contest, several countries’ juries tried hard to derail Conchita’s victory. Those countries were Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Montenegro, and Poland. However, televoters disagreed with their juries. Austria was ranked second in the Armenian televoting, third in the Azeri televoting, forth in the Belarussian and Polish televoting, and fifth in the Montenegrin televoting. If the EBU scrapped the jury in this year’s contest, Austria would have won with 315 points based on the televoting only.
Austria, Poland, and Switzerland benefited most from televoting:
From 1997 to 2007, only televoting decided the winner of the contest. If this were the case, Austria’s margin of victory would have been greater. Poland would have finished fifth instead of fourteenth, and Switzerland would have finished seventh instead of thirteenth. The biggest loser would have been Norway, dropping from eighth (88 points) to seventeenth (39 points).
Eurovision 2014 Televoting Results
1. Austria – 315
2. The Netherlands – 220
3. Sweden – 194
4. Armenia – 193
5. Poland – 150
6. Russia – 132
7. Switzerland – 115
8. Ukraine – 112
9. Romania – 101
10. Hungary – 98
11. Belarus – 56
12. Finland – 45
13. Spain – 45
14. Iceland – 43
15. Greece – 41
16. Denmark – 41
17. Norway – 39
18. Montenegro – 33
19. Italy – 32
20. Germany – 31
21. Azerbaijan – 26
22. United Kingdom – 24
23. San Marino – 23
24. Malta – 21
25. Slovenia – 15
26. France – 1
Austria’s margin of victory evaporated under a jury-only scoring system.
If ESC 2014 was under the pre-1997 jury-only scoring system, Austria would have won with 224 points. Sweden and the Netherlands would have finished with 201 and 200 points respectively. Overall, it would have been a much closer contest. Malta, Finland, and Azerbaijan would have benefitted the most, finishing sixth, seventh, and eighth respectively. Here is a full breakdown below:
Eurovision 2014: Jury results
1. Austria – 224
2. Sweden – 201
3. The Netherlands – 200
4. Hungary – 138
5. Armenia – 125
6. Malta – 119
7. Finland – 114
8. Azerbaijan – 108
9. Norway – 102
10. Denmark – 85
11. Spain – 83
12. Ukraine – 78
13. Russia – 70
14. Germany – 61
15. Iceland – 59
16. Romania – 51
17. Belarus – 50
18. Greece – 49
19. Montenegro – 48
20. United Kingdom – 47
21. Italy – 37
22. Switzerland – 27
23. Poland – 23
24. Slovenia – 21
25. San Marino – 21
26. France – 5
Conclusions. The contest has made some dynamic shifts over the past ten years. In 2004, fans saw the emergence of the Balkan and ex-Soviet countries. In 2008, bloc voting was so rampant that juries were introduced. In 2012, Eurovision held its contest at its most eastern location, Baku. Now, Eurovision is heading back to the West with two dominant voting blocs and a disintegrated and disengaged Balkan bloc. It begs the question: Does the EBU need to scrap juries and bring back a televoting-only scoring system? How can the EBU hold countries accountable for engaging in ethical behavior? The contest and its format are constantly changing. This story is to be continued…
The ESCritic is a frequent contributor to WiwiBloggs.com. You can visit his web site at http://theescritic.blogspot.co.uk/. You can also keep up-to-date with the latest Eurovision news and gossip by following the team on Twitter @wiwibloggs and by liking our Facebook page.
I found this year a lot LESS political than most years.
As there were very few Balkan countries his year- Slovenia didn’t do as well as it would have in say 2012.
Ukraine gave 12 points to Sweden which is unusual despite the fact that they often like Norway.
The Baltic States all gave 12 points to the Netherlands
An interesting year for voting.
Someone made a genious comment on the supposed block voting once. It went something like: People vote for the music they like and often neighbouring countries share musical traditions (to some degree) which would increase the possibility of voting for a neighbouring country on that basis. However, here’s some interesting facts about the 2008 voting: “If we imagine an absurd scenario where only the participating countries from the 27 EU countries could vote, thus excluding most of the direct Russian neighbours, the winner would also have been Russia. If we imagine – even more absurd – that only the pre-enlargement… Read more »
I think Italy has really strange voting results. They gave high points to Iceland, Malta, Slovenia and Poland; low points to Armenia, UK, Spain, Sweden.
If there is a problem with the juries then increase their size. Have 10, 20 or 50 jurors. This will increase the diversity.
Only participating Europeans should vote in ESC. No international juries.
Georgia’s jury votes in the Grand Final were all declared invalid, as all the jury members had voted exactly the same from 3 point up to 12 points. According to EBU, this constitutes a statistical impossibility. Therefore only Georgia’s televoting result was used for the distribution of the Georgian points in the Grand Final.
@eurana (May 13 @ 3:04:42): I’ve been advocating for something similar to that since last year. Once again, here is what I propose: Of the 5 continents not allowed to participate, open voting to the biggest economic powers in each of those 5 continents: Africa: Nigeria North America: United States South America: Brazil Oceania: Australia Asia: China. Take a look at this: http://oikotimes.com/2014/05/15/here-is-how-the-chinese-fans-voted/ If China could vote, 12 points would go to Sweden, 10 to Ireland if they had qualified. Since they didn’t, 10 would go to Montenegro, 8 to Spain, 7 to Norway, 6 to Switzerland, 5 to Azerbaijan,… Read more »
I hope Balkan axis will be transformed and reborn the next year. : D
The interesting part is the one where we see jurors supporting bloc voting in Scandinavian and ex-Soviet cluster. And also, the West is a lot less oriented towards East than vice versa.
Still, it was a good show.
First of all, I must point out that this year was the first time I was able to watch the Grand Final (thanks to online streaming). I had heard about Eurovision before, but had never given it any real attention. Secondly, and more importantly, I am an American. Therefore, I cannot possibly know anything of the rivalries, politics, intrigue, and history of this modern version of the song contests of the later Middle Ages (see Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg). Nonetheless, thanks to the Internet, I still get to have an opinion. I was going to comment about how you should… Read more »
1. Armenia vs Azerbaijan – Disappointing, but definitely saw it coming. It’s sad that 5 years ago, Armenia actually gave a point to Azerbaijan. At this point it looks like these two will not share any points anytime soon. 2. Soviet Bloc vs Scandinavia – Surprisingly, I think Soviet countries were more western oriented than western countries towards eastern countries. The only country that secured any points from Scandinavian countries was Armenia, that’s not too promising. 3. Juries – Wow, the role of juries in some countries is definitely questionable. I believe that the juries in Belarus and Azerbaijan should… Read more »
I wish people would stop dividing Europe on east and west, because that division is not geographical or cultural, it is political. Eastern Europe means “former communist countries”. Communism ended 24 years ago and those countries are still branded as such.
azeri juries have no taste at all… placing all top 3 in the bottom! :/
Can we stop claiming the diaspora from a country determines the winner. I’ve heard people claim here in various posts that 70% of the vote from some countries is the Romanian diaspora, that 50% is the Polish diaspora, etc.
Look at the raw demographics – no diaspora has a significant percentage of the people in any country.
Armenian’s song . ,,YOU are not alone” is a wonderful . I am sure that even ISRAEL’s, BELGIUM’s, ITALY’s GREECE’s juries,( and some others ) although took 12 points , which are earned by ARAM MP3 . NOW enjoy a wonderful song. MAy be the next year politics won’t impact on your taste ,Juries.
@ESCritic Here is breakdown of results. Wikipedia is accurate. In televoting Armenia was 3rd with 193 points and Sweden 4th with 190. 1 Albania 2 Armenia 3 Austria 4 Azerbaijan 5 Belarus 6 Belgium 7 Denmark 8 Estonia 9 FYR Macedonia 10 Finland 11 France 12 Georgia 13 Germany 14 Greece 15 Hungary 16 Iceland 17 Ireland 18 Israel 19 Italy 20 Latvia 21 Lithuania 22 Malta 23 Moldova 24 Montenegro 25 Norway 26 Poland 27 Portugal 28 Romania 29 Russia 30 San Marino 31 Slovenia 32 Spain 33 Sweden 34 Switerland 35 The Netherlands 36 Ukraine 37 United Kingdom… Read more »
*wrong my mistake too much coffee most probably
A funny thing. The night of the final I wrote down in alphabetical order all the televoting points. And in Azerbaijan in televoting Armenia was 7th and now is 25th. Quite a storm should’ve been for EBU 🙂
Thanks to Europe’s gay voters that won it for Austria. A man in a dress with a beard, for goodness sake! As a woman, this creature offends me. Except transgenders, I regard men wearing womens clothing to be pitiful and awful.
I like the idea of a jury… but a honest jury, it keeps the voting cool and equilibrated because let’s face it, Eurofans are very impulsive and they let the most popular songs get into the winning spot and we must remember that popular does not equal best, and the jury should provide a focused and expert point of view… supposedly. The problem is that the jury is too corrupted by political issues and as said before by another comments a 100% televoting sistem would be too boring and predictable. For me the simpler and better way to avoid this… Read more »
The only way you could stop political voting would be to submit all songs in advance, in secret, all written in English, and then have them performed by the same artist! That way you couldn’t tell which country you were voting for, other than by some chance ethnic clues of the music. It would be boring as all hell to watch, and would totally defeat the original aims of the contest. (Also we impassioned ESC tragics would have to start caring about sport or something out of sheer tedium … ugh!) Eurovision thrives on controversy, in fact, Europe needs it… Read more »
Change the traditional jury for international jury from Australia, Canada and South Africa. Easy.
The public were only asked to vote for an act. But the jury members were supposed, somehow, to rank 25 acts in order. How can any normal human do that in a reasonable space of time? We can all manage to rank two: best – worst. Or three best – indifferent – worst. We can probably go up to four or five at a pinch. But 25? No way.
There are 2 types of biased voting at the ESC, all of it mostly sub-conscious. Of course, there is unbiased voting at Eurovision, but biased voting has a large impact. Bias 1) Voting as a result of cultural closeness (mutually understandable languages, similar religion etc.), and these countries also have diaspora because of long ago border changes, and 20th/21st C. migration to each other. Extreme examples where two countries basically have the same people are Greece & Cyprus, Romania & Moldova etc. Bias 2) Voting that is as a result of 20th / 21st century migration, where there is no… Read more »
@ESCritic i’m not sure anymore.. 🙂 can’t use pc right now and browsing eurovision.tv on mobile drives me crazy.
@Josh oh, you’ve mentioned about covering up the countries for the jury.. damn, somehow i missed that))
I’m half asleep :p
@Wergie – you probably looked at it at another website who probably copied and pasted it from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not always a reliable resource. Eurovision.tv did not break down jury-only and televote-only votes. If so, what’s the link?
@ESCritic i saw it on eurovision.tv :-
Surely I’m not an expert, but stating that Poland’s act was the worst one of the night, like some jurors did, is just plain wrong.
It seems to me that prudery had the best part of some juries (not all of them, fortunately).
@Josh agree.. the professional jury from New Zealand, Australia, US, Brazil, South Africa, China etc. should judge the songs (and here comes my suggestion) they should judge it w/o knowing names and countries of contestants)))
@Wergie and @Julian: The split results (televote only and jury only) on Wikipedia are wrong. I have audited the Wikipedia results, and they are wrong. I have done my calculations numerous times to validate my numbers. My numbers are correct, and I can even break them down per country.
@Josh A quick youtube search immediately reveals which song is from which country, I get want you want but with internet and social media that is impossible
You forgot one country that tried to derail Conchita and that is San Marino – 0 points (was a jury only country). Armenia was 3rd in televoting (see wikipedia). Most favoured by jury in final were by far Malta and Azerbaijan that also in case of only televoting would’ve let their qualifying places to Portugal and Ireland. Wonder what have juries seen in Malta and Azerbaijan that nobody else can see.
I’m sure certain soviet nations cheated in jury voting (see Georgia). I can’t believe that their juries thought that Russia had the 3rd best song of the contest. That’s ridiculous. Their juries supported soviet nations and didn’t rank the songs. Also, San Marino should leave the contest. Useless! No televoting, just jury which gives a lot of points to Azerbaijan (12 this year? seriously??) and none to Italy! Do they want to make us believe that some “professionals” at the age of 20 (!) went crazy about Azerbaijan’s lullaby? Seriously? I’m 100% sure something shady happened there! There were rumours… Read more »
A couple of suggestions to assist in the elimination of bloc voting within the juries: 1. The EBU could block out the name of the country that appears on the screen for the juries, and just display the song number. The juries then rank the song only based on it’s running order position. And considering most songs were either sung fully or partly in English this year, it would be hard for the juries to distinguish which song belongs to which country. 2. Form a jury to eliminate bloc voting made up of music professionals outside of Europe. Invite people… Read more »
There’s a great example where juries prevented bloc voting this year. Portuguese juries ranked Spain 21st, while public voting was 3rd. Those juries couldn’t know that in the first semifinal Spain ranked Portugal 7th on jury’s voting and 1st on televoting. I don’t know if that’s diaspora, bloc voting or just being good neighbours, specially when we consider how lame this year’s portuguese entry was. I suppose that the portuguese jury is fed up with giving 12 points to Spain year after year no matter what crap we present. Only that this year we actually deserved some points from them… Read more »
EUROVISION 2014 TELEVOTING RESULTS
1. Austria – 315
2. The Netherlands – 220
3. Armenia – 194
4. Sweden – 193
5. Poland – 150
Armenia is third by televoters not Sweden.
There is another strange 12 points… from San Marino to Azerbaijan. First semi and the final both 12 points)) Btw., Dilara during her promo tour (with her all fixing team) had San Marino in their agenda.
Btw.2 the jury of San Marino consisted of very professional musicians who were born in 1992,95 lmao the oldest one was born somewhere in 1970th.
This is not normal..
I am so happy that Ebu show how voted in all countriesin all countries )))We with our friends with )))We with our friends with Family vote for Austria ;I send 60 times only I have a lot of friends and relatives they send alot of voice too)And when I see only 1 vote )I was angry )Our Jury Asshole )Big congratulations to Austria )Amazing song )And I am happy ,now everybody see that we give 8 points in telovoting)Ebu must prohibited to vote Azerbaijan jury
If introducing the juries was intended to minimize political/block voting, the juries have utterly failed at their job. When the Russian jury awards more points to Belarus than even the Russian public, how is that not block voting? There are endless possibilities of bribery and corruption and you can’t tell me they don’t happen. Or do you honestly think the five Belarusian jurors ALL thought Austria wasn’t good enough for Top 20 while their public thought it was worthy of the Top 5?
Time to go back to 100% televote.
So the point is: let’s ask them to only use televoting considering that it favours the crap we fans love like Poland for instance. And let’s drown into the depth of shit all the piano ballads like Norway. Right .. diversity, respect and tolerance even in music … beautiful Austria was the best in both televoting and juries and that is all that matters at this stage. Wanting certain countries to rank higher because juries did not see it like televoters did (Poland as the best example) just showcases how one personal music taste is treated to the degree of… Read more »
Im so disappointed in Eurovision voting. I think Conchita won partially because some high scores were given to her as a support and as a gesture of her being so brave. And I completelly agree that all scandinavian countries help each other as well as all post-soviet countries. And then, some big countries automatically are in final. Its unfear to others. There have to be a way to vote right, other wise there is no point to spend so much money for participating in ESC.
@straycat
All of the members in the Georgian jury had the EXACT same top 8 and that was obviously cheating so EBU decided to disqualify the jury.
Malta placing 2nd in semifinal and 6th in final with juries and almost last with televoting shows how political the contest has become. This happens every year and because Malta has no neighbours people do not tend to vote for them. Malta should back out from this mess of a contest immediately.
@ straycat: for the Georgian jury, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest_2014
@ Sam: for an “old system”-analysis, see http://www.eurosong.be/66586/analyse-de-resultaten-onder-de-loep (in Dutch, but the table says it all)
I am positive that having a jury-only voting system wasn’t at all in line with the spirit of the ESC; after all, the public is the main aim and recipient of the show and their voice should be heard so that the Eurovision would always be dynamic and democratic. That said, I do agree with having a professional jury, as far as they act professional. As Rashad clearly stated: “If you can’t vote objectively then you don’t deserve that seat.” (he posted a great overall comment, btw… I LOVED “the unsaid” about Nikki!). Having a jury is supposed to guarantee… Read more »
You all look with hate towards the East, but you don’t exactly comment what’s happening in the West’s yard. At least Wiwi gave tables and placed them in front of you to see them, but you still moan about the East. Magical.
Weirdly, I had never noticed that the Nordic vs Soviet division went that deep before.
The Belarussian votes are fascinating. Why did they like Malta? Why did they hate San Marino even worse than the lovely Conchita? What caused them to disagree about Poland, and only Poland?
Also, while we’re talking vote breakdowns, did we get a reason for the discarding of the Georgian jury vote?
I doubt Poland’s high rank was a result of the Polish diaspora. Many Brits I was with voted for Poland, including myself. I think it’s an absolute joke that our votes – which we PAID for – did not convert into points for Poland. Especially considering their 1st place rank in the British televote. I wonder if this situation is down to the new ranking system in which every juror member has to rank each and every song and the televoting results are ranked before an overall average rank is calculated. Perhaps someone wonderful on wiwibloggs could calculate how the… Read more »
I seriously think countries who try to manipulate the jury voting (or the televoting) should be banned from the contest for several years. Cheating is not allowed and it’s important for EBU to show that. We don’t want cheaters in this contest.
One of the biggest surprises for me was when Ukraine gave 12 points to Sweden, who could have ever guessed that?
Neither the UK nor Ireland gave any points to Poland last night. Poland ranked first in the public vote AND last in the jury vote in both countries.
Now, I understand that the Polish diaspora inflated the televoting rank and that’s not cool. But come on jury members, was My S?owianie really the absolutely worst entry of the night? Is the jury supposed to counterbalance the public vote or to impartially assess the musical quality of each song? I’d like to believe it’s the latter. There, my Eurovision rant is over. At least Conchita won! <3
Thank you Wiwibloggs for turning into words what I thought the next day of the show. I’m ashamed of our jury members. First of all, what is it with ranking Armenia the last? The same goes for the Armenian jury as well. Did you really hate the song that you reacted this way? I mean, you’re the damn jury. You’re supposed to balance the voting in a fair way. If you can’t vote objectively then you don’t deserve that seat. I don’t get why the Azerbaijani jury members were such homophobes. There’s something wrong with this. Considering a member of… Read more »
I agree that juries need to go, there is too much power in 5 people’s hands in something as big as this!
There is too much room for bribery, collusion, and bias with the jury system. Isnt this one of the reasons why Turkey withdrew from Eurovision? I don’t blame them now that I am seeing things like this. Thanks for this interesting post Willy!
I do agree that some of the juries’ rankings, notably those of the Caucasus countries, are utterly bizarre, and their objectives are as transparent as they are unacceptable. I don’t, however, mourn the loss of 100% televoting. Back in 2008 the contest was slowly killing itself with increasingly predictable, farcical voting. Yes, statistically speaking the diaspora votes do little to change the actual result of the contest; a good song will do well regardless, however watching the voting it didn’t feel that way. A casual viewer could guess nearly every 8, 10 and 12, and it sapped any joy, excitement… Read more »