On Saturday we learned that María Ólafsdóttir had won the Icelandic national final Söngvakeppni with her song “Unbroken”, after battling it out in the superfinal with pop idol Friðrik Dór and his song “Once Again”. Now broadcaster RÚV has revealed the voting breakdown – and the results are surprising.
“Unbroken” was not the jury’s favourite. They gave María a mere seven points, with Friðrik getting the top score of 12 points. Friðrik was also initially the Icelandic people’s choice, winning the televote after the first round of voting. This means that if there hadn’t been a second round of voting with the superfinal, Friðrik would have been Iceland’s representative in Vienna.
The jury also put Björn and Félagar in second place and Elín Sif in third place. So its safe to say that the results of the superfinal would have been completely different if it wasn’t determined by televote alone.
The graphic shows how the jury and the nation voted in the finals. The first part shows how the first televoting ended up, next the combined results from jury and televoting, and finally the televoting from the superfinal.
María won her semifinal by a landslide, with 6428 votes, with CADEM a distant runner-up with 4953 votes. But only 113 votes divided Friðrik and Elín Sif in the first semifinal. During the grand final broadcast, the people of Iceland voted in record numbers. The televotes added up to a whopping 83,353, which means that roughly 85% of the nation voted.
In other news, it has been confirmed by the StopWaitGo production team and María herself, that Friðrik will go to Vienna after all, as one of María’s backing vocalists. So y’all will encounter both of the singers in Austria and no one is left out. Isn’t that just the sweetest thing?
“This means that if there hadn’t been a second round of voting with the superfinal, Friðrik would have been Iceland’s representative in Vienna”
You have no idea how angry and sad I am. Fridrik had the best song and they chose that stupid preteenage song for american tv show…idiots.
Sietske, check the “Iceland in Eurovision 2015” Wikipedia page, I think all the numbers are shown there. If I remember correctly, “Augnablik” was sadly last in that semifinal, but at least it wasn’t in the absolute rock bottom. WTF, it seems to me like that argument is brought up every year – last year was also the worst one, as the year before and so on. I didn’t like the Danish entry at first, but after the live performance I found it tolerable, not as annoying as their previous entry. I just advice everyone to wait until all songs are… Read more »
@Rayman: The negativity is fully justified, this is the weakest year since the early 2000’s. I wouldn’t call Denmark’s entry, for example, pure filth, but only because that would be an insult to said pure filth.
Hey. Are there figures for the first semi? I want to know what happened to Augnablik by Stefanía (It may be on the page and I’m just being blind) because I’m still super mad that it didn’t qualify.
I’m just glad that in cases like these where televoting and jury voting don’t match, the power is given to the people.
In my particular case, these two were my top favourites, I loved Friðrik almost as much as Maria, just for different reasons, so in my case it was a “I win, or I win” 😛
And I’m glad to hear Friðrik will be in Vienna!
Very nice to see the full results! It seems like Eurovision is quite popular in Iceland, given the big amounts of televotes. But I can’t help but feel dissapointed that Regina Ósk’s entry failed in the selection – her song got the least amount of votes of all the entries. I still love it though. Easpag, they could mean that among those who watched the televised show (let’s say 100,000), 85% participated in the voting. But I could be wrong. And Charles, you seem rather negative. I like Iceland’s entry a lot, I think it’s the best one selected so… Read more »
Stupid wannabe pretentious ANNOYING song…Really pity that it was the winner song.. Prince Fridric should had won instead in Söngvakeppni and represent proud Iceland { that is full of (un)BROKEN gay guys living there 😉 they must be even more than the UNbroken guys.. 😛 } Iceland then would NOT be low on my top40 ranking list like its gonna be with this lame childish song.. Well its **Never Too Late** <3 4 dear Iceland to change mind and compete in Vienna's Diamond Esc Vision of Gay Love with another different song and Prince Fridric as the main icelandic act..… Read more »
…..
So, this song, as dated as it is, childish, repetitive and plain dull won the televote but had difficulties with their jury. People!
I predict this so fail in the same category in Vienna. And maybe the televoters will vote this down too. One can wish.
This is the only entry in this year’s ESC that I have paid far more attention while I am not really into anything else. But it lacks the wow factor that I felt last year for the entries of Norway, Hungary and The Netherlands, which explains my fall out with this year’s edition and my attempt to understand why on earth people are so inclined for both the drag queen song from Serbia (well in this case I DO know why, but I’ll keep my mouth shut) and Italy’s Il Divo entry … and since I don’t like Il Divo… Read more »
How does 83,000 votes equal 85% of the population? Iceland has a population of 325,000 people. That would make it 25%.