Analysis from a fan has thrown suspicion onto the “aggregated” voting that replaced the Belarus jury vote. Eurovision fan Bruno has revealed that the votes given to Belarus may have in fact been the bottom ten ranked songs of the aggregated vote, not the top ten.
Earlier in the week, the Belarus jury was dismissed after revealing who they had voted for in the semi-finals. The EBU confirmed that for the grand final, the Belarus jury would be replaced with an “aggregated result”.
However, when the results were revealed on Saturday night, it surprised fans. No points had been given to culturally close Russia, while Israel picked up its only jury points with a hefty douze points from Belarus. The rest of the voting seemed to ignore the big favourites of the jury votes and rewarded the less popular acts.
- Israel – 12 points
- Estonia – 10 points
- Germany – 8 points
- Norway – 7 points
- Spain – 6 points
- United Kingdom – 5 points
- San Marino – 4 points
- Serbia – 3 points
- Iceland – 2 points
- Australia – 1 points
But there may be an explanation for the strange voting.
Twitter user @euro_bruno analysed the average jury results of the four other countries that are grouped in the same “pot” as Belarus — Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Russia. These countries are regional neighbours and have cultural and linguistic ties.
guys I was just here (over)analysing last night's #Eurovision results and I think I just found out how the (very weird) Belarusian jury results were made!!! here's a whole thread explaining the process
— Bruno ?? | ?????????? (@euro_bruno) May 19, 2019
When Bruno looked at the average ranks that the juries from these four countries gave, he discovered that the Belarus “aggregated” jury scores exactly matched the bottom ten songs.
This suggests that the aggregated vote for Belarus was mistakenly taken from the wrong end of a spreadsheet. However, this theory has not been confirmed by the EBU.
Looking at the top ten of this jury group, the aggregated results from Belarus could have been this:
- Malta – 12 points
- North Macedonia – 10 points
- Cyprus – 8 points
- Italy – 7 points
- The Netherlands – 6 points
- Azerbaijan – 5 points
- Switzerland – 4 points
- Greece – 3 points
- Sweden – 2 points
- Russia – 1 point
These results would have meant that North Macedonia would have won the jury vote, while Israel would have been bottom with nil points. In the overall points table there would have been some changes to the rankings. including North Macedonia who would be in seventh place, switching with Azerbaijan in eighth place.
However, the Netherlands would still have won, only with a slightly higher score.
The situation is similar to the case of the Swedish juror Lina Hedlund, who is believed to have accidentally made her semi-final song rankings in reverse order.
However, Lina Hedlund was just one jury member on a five-person team. While her rankings did have a minor impact on the overall Swedish jury result, it did still not affect the overall jury results for semi-final two.
The EBU and Belarus broadcaster BTRC have not yet commented on on this issue.
What do you think? Should the Belarus jury aggregate result be formally investigated? Or should the Saturday night results stand? Tell us your thoughts below!
Poland Tulia is underestimated
It should be investigated and fixed as soon as possible. They need to admit to their fault and show that the integrity of this show matters. Mistakes happen, however they need to addressed, the scores amended and a formal apology issued to all the countries affected. This can’t just be swept under the carpet. The EBU penalised Croatia 30% of its final score in The Eurovision Song Contest in 1999 as the backing vocals were not 100% live. This was done after the show. The funny thing is, is that it happened in Israel as well. History repeating itself. But… Read more »
It’s not quite true that Croatia were penalised 30% of its score back in 1999 – the actual number of points remained the same, but only two thirds of their score counted toward the average that determined their participation rights for the following year.
Even without the 12 points , kobi is not last . At least that lol
What about the ridiculous vote trading between Cyprus and Greece as well as Romania and Moldova that has been going on for years without these countries being disqualified from the competition?
What about Denmark Sweden and Norway voting each other idiot?
You don’t need to call anybody an idiot just because you disagree with them. Respect and education go first.
Seems that one of the czech juries in SF1 gave his rank upside down. If that’s the case I have the true results (homemade):
·10- Poland 123
·11- Belarus 117
Is the only modification in the ranking, but also other countries (Cyprus and Georgia) got changes in the amount of points.
Yes, you’re right. The chairperson of the Czech jury Jitka Zelenkova confirmed this mistake indirectly in an interview with a Czech Eurovision fan club. It’s a shame that Poland didn’t qualify just because of her mistake. This undermines the credibility of the whole Czech jury. And questions the way how well the EBU really checks and verifies the received results. This just shouldn’t happen but keeps happening again and again almost every year.
It’s one thing if a juri member does not follow directions s–that’s on them. Should’ve paid attention. But if the EBU messes up then they have to fix it.
And this is what makes it unfair. Imagine the things that we don’t know – we see such news but how many other things like this happened during last years? All in all we could have totally different results. It’s just not fair because I am sure EBU won’t do a single thing to fix it, again. As always they are going to act like nothing happened. It’s against artists that do their best and also it’s against fans because such mistakes make the entries they voted for just lower.
ok is time somebody apologizes to N.Macedonia, Poland and Lithuania for all this….And please next year make more interactive tables for the ranks of the “professional” juries
Next year give them a pen and some paper, and maybe another sheet of paper with a table of their final standings 1st to 26th. Simple and easy!
…i can’t believe they’re still using juries when they’re found guilty of bias and mistakes far more than the public, this ain’t the 2000s anymore sweaty we can live with public vote only
Serhat coming 10th in the televote and 11 countries giving Russia “douze points” on televote, has shown us that, in fact, we can’t.
So what if people like Serhat and it’s not exactly a masterpiece, it’s fun and positive. And Serhat is Serhat. 🙂 And even Russia can’t send just anything, like last year when they didn’t make it to the final. Also, the juries are just as political as the general public, probably more so. But in the end the song is what matters, which is why the result is different every year.
The Czech Chairwoman has given her semi-final votes in the wrong order. This, could have meant, that Poland would have actually gone to the final. I suppose there were more such flops from the juries. This only means – they must go!
Like the EBU couldn’t have a back-up jury of 3 people with no European/Australian connections. If one country’s jury fail, you pick points randomly from 1 person. Let’s hope there will be no than 4 juries screwing around. It would be better than this mess.
Belarus vote was psychedelic 😀
It wasn’t really Belarus but I agree. It was entertaining but unfair at the same time. Getting 12 points for placing last – that’s something never seen before.
The results need to be updated to reflect this: Its unfair to countries and would altar a few of the positions such N Macedonia getting 7th place and top with the Juries, and Malta moving from 16th to 14th place with 107 pts, and Cyprus would move to 13th place with 109 points total. This should be rectified by the EBU!
No way! The Belarusian vote is great as it is. No changes, please! It was just another of those bizarre things that happen @ Eurovision. Nothing more nothing less.
This is more bad than people think, I mean Malta would have finished 13th (left hand side) instead of 16th and Israel would have got no jury points in the final (which is deserved tbh)
This is both hilarious and incredibly convenient for the host country and broadcaster…
The EBU should consider implementing a jury boot camp next year.
they should consider removing the jury all together. it would cut costs, save time and be fairer to everyone
And allow novelty acts to flourish to attract votes and the return of campus staging during the dark days of the televoting era?
I don’t care if they gave the bottom ten or the top ten. They’re all fake, so what does it matter? Sure, it would have been nice if North Macedonia topped the jury vote…but there are other factors to consider too. Namely the blatant vote-trading of Russia and Azerbaijan – they gave each other their top marks, but more than that – they both purposely excluded the favorite, The Netherlands, to further boost their own scores. If these two countries had played fairly, who knows what the top of the leaderboard would have looked like? Especially considering it was so… Read more »
Russia and Azerbaijan trading jury 12s is not so weird considering that both countries had good songs and stage presentations, were also favored by jurors from the rest of the continent (unlike, say, Greece and Cyprus) and also traded top points in the televote, meaning there is cohesion between the juries and the public.
I’d sooner point out all Armenian jurors placing Azerbaijan dead last (and I assume Azerbaijan did likewise in the semi) as always, and all Georgian jurors placing Russia last and Cyprus first.
You’re right, it’s not so weird – that two known cheaters should collude between themselves to rig the vote in their favor. It’s not at all surprising, and a far more logical explanation than “cohesion between the juries and public”. Yeah…sure.
With that criteria, might as well point out that Italy gave no jury points to their biggest competitors Netherlands and Russia while awarding 12 to a non-event like Denmark , and it’s not the first time they’ve done it.
Russia and Azerbaijan are part of a cultural block (much like, gasp, Scandinavia), the fact that they voted for each other in a year where they both had good songs is not shocking, nor is it cheating.
How nobody noticed that Israel can never get 12 points in an aggregate generated by combining ANY other countries votes (all=0 to Israel) ?
Spot on!
My God, why is every juror so ret__ded or why are the instructions so difficult to understand? It is very simple indeed. The EBU needs to fix this asap.
If there is no error, this must be among the abnormal votes through Eurovision history.
This aggregated result cost North Macedonia a jury victory and 7th place overall. Also, the rather narrow margin between Netherlands and Italy of only 27 points, and the fact that Netherlands neither won the jury nor the telephone vote, leaves room for lots of suspicion.
Neither the runner-up, nor the third won jury/televote. It’s not that if Duncan couldn’t have won, it’d be fair for either Italy or Russia by your logic.
I mean, both Italy and Russia didn’t win either one of them, either. Netherlands had the most points when combined, so that’s how they won without winning the jury/televote. Same thing happened to Ukraine in 2016.
The list goes on: Russian juror Igor Gulyajev seems to have ranked the songs in reverse order as well: he placed Albania 16th and The Netherlands 17th in the semi-final, and in the final he ranked Azerbaijan as his 1st and Albania as his 2nd (and vice versa – Switzerland was 2nd in SF and 24th in Final)
I would love to see the actual result, with all corrections made, at least for the artists to get a little bit of justice. The Netherlands/Italy, Russia/Switzerland and Sweden/Norway were so close, there could easily be some changes. Not even to mention the semi final crime that happend to Poland and Lithuania..
Also, that Igor Gulyaev guy ranked Denmark 1st and Russian jury gave to Denmark 3 points. Had it been ranked last, no jury points from Russia to Denmark would have been given.
Yep, that means Lithuania would have qualified instead
I will not get tired repeating that having only 5 jury members is wrong. There should be at least 10 of them so that no one of them can affect the overall results.
Why is this such an issue? I think the main fault lies with the EBU! When you have the jury show you can at least give more attention to the pointing system!?
Probably Jitka Zelenková from the Czech Republic gave her ranking of countries in the wrong order. This could have contributed to the promotion of Belarus instead of Poland. Poland would receive 10 points from the Czech jury and not 7.
It looks very likely! OMG´if I were EBU I’d have second thoughts about releasing this detailed voting… They should obviously put Favourite to Least favourite on the paper instead of numbers.
for the first time since 2014, they do not report a country’s(belarus) complete splitt results for jury and telephone voting
Correct
nah, they MUST report detailed voting for a matter of transparence.
This cannot be true! As a Pole, I would be furious if that’s the case. I really hope for some investigation from the EBU.
Looks like we have to repeat the whole contest, starting with semi final 1..
It happened once in 2016 but now we have like 3 examples this year alone? The so called music experts are idiots and/or ignorants not to check out the rules for one minute. Performers put their careers on the line. At least have decency to judge them fair. Now not only Kobi was the worst so he got 12 points, ZENA was less liked by Czech jury member so she got to the final instead of more liked Tulia. That’s ESC logic for you. It’s farce at this moment and summarize this year’s edition, maybe the worst of 2010s.
they had removed the rule what happens if a country’s juryvoting/ telephone vote crashes or breaks into this year’s eurovision. in previous years there has been a rule on it.
EBU have not has not reported belarus jury and televoting full voting in the final.
Add. Before the final of Esc 2019 they remove the rules
No, this rule was removed in 2016, in order to prove San Marino (and any other countries who are to small for a televote such as Monaco and Andorra) or countries who can’t provide one with a televote or jury result
they have removed the information about it in the rule book, but it says on this page that the rule is still valid .https://eurovision.tv/about/voting
I mean they still use the rule according to they page
Malta would have the first 12 points after some time! And jump up 2 positions!
And North Macedonia would’ve been 7th.
If this is true, then EBU should make changes to the final score, because it’s not legit to take someone’s rightful place.. North Macedonia won the jury vote and placed 7th overall.. They should come out with a statement that mistakes has been made and this is the final result.. let’s not be ignorant.. Macedonia truly deserved their best placement ever! Congrats to The Netherlands as a winner as well!
Thank you from N. Macedonia <3
I think they didn´t want a change at the top only because of an aggregated result. And maybe the EBU didn´t want the host-country too end up with Zero Points in the Jury-vote :P.
But that’s what happened it changed the results at the top. And since when do we have pity made up points?
Leave the pity points to JESC where theh give each country a douze points so they won’t finish with 0 points :3
I hate math and I don’t understand — can someone explain this in laymen’s terms?
Come on… Anyway 1. The entire jury panel of Belarus was dismissed before GF 2. Still there needs to be a set of points given under the name of “Belarusian jury” 3. In the GF, the points you saw given by Belarusian jury were actually computed from something else 4. As per EBU, this “something else” is the voting preferences from some sampled countries’ juries 5. Now someone has proposed a theory: the “sampled countries” in this case are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Russia – the countries that are in the same pot with Belarus during allocation draw because they… Read more »
It’s pretty simple, they wanted Sweeden to finish first in the jury vote so the focus would be on it not on Macedonia. Everybody knew Macedonia got low televote points so the suspense would’ve been dead when the last televote would’ve been announced
Sweden did lose 1 place.
That’s their fault for changing the voting presentation again.
With last year’s presentation, both N-Macedonia and Sweden would be out pretty early. And the suspense would be on Italy, Netherlands and Norway until the very end.
ban the jurors
I suspect it’s so that the Belarusian vote didn’t have any impact on the winners at all. Distribute it amongst the worst songs so that there can’t be any accusation that there was any engineering of the top 10.
Omg if this is true North Macedonia would’ve won the jury vote!
If it is true. And if it is corrected then Sweden would be placed fifth!
I do have to agree that the voting was pretty messy; however, in my opinion, Eurovision in Israel is one of the best, modern, advanced, we can surely see the progress. The effects, LEDs, fireworks, great job. The entries, wow, the best year in the whole history of Eurovision, and the Netherlands, the best winner so far.
Nah semi final one was one of the weakest semi finals ever (literally so boring omg), the final was good but definitely not the best year ever. The effects weren’t that great and it was just a led screen- not that impressive
It was a good final, I enjoyed it. But wasn’t technologically spectacular! Camera work and effects were better in 2016 and 2018. Lighting was better in 2018. This year’s edition was saved by the LED screen. But LED screens have been around for a long time. It’s easy to make a good presentation on a LED screen. It is way more difficult to make a great lighting show. So, I have to say it was way more impressive what Portugal and OSRAM did last year with their massive lighting system. 2018 had the best lighting and pyro of all editions,… Read more »
This year the stage was the most versatile, including great lighting effects in entries that chose to use its capabilities (for example, Serbia). Not to mention ceiling triangles.
Camera work was wonky at best. It had so many technical issues. Flashy performances yes, but technically this Eurovision was big flop.
that Estonia camera fail ooffff….
Oh well… Nothing to do about it now. EBU f***ed it up and shouldnt interfere now. Why take away the enjoyment of Israel not scoring 0 points. That would be horrible to say at least.
Facts don’t care about your feelings.
If it was wrong, it was wrong and should be corrected.
OK, The Netherlands was a derserving winner.
BUT! This voting was a total mess, a joke
I thought that the UK getting 5 points was strange. So we really got 11 in total. 1 point more than Josh Dubovie. Come on we weren’t that bad surely.
I didn’t think it was that bad, but it needs to be good enough to beacome someone’s favourite, or at least one of their favourites to get points. I liked lots of songs and was sad that some of them didn’t do all that well, but then I didn’t vote for them either, just my favourite. Also please send a song in Welsh or Gaelic from the UK, I would love that!
I’m hoping for a regional language from the UK too! It actually shocks me when I’ve met people from Europe who had no idea that languages like Welsh, Gaelic, Cornish etc even existed. At least the UK do at least sing in their language every year..
It wasn’t that bad but it would never have made it out of the semi finals. It’s disappointing as we can actually get a decent score these days with the juries
Honestly you don’t have to be a genius to look at the scores for a second and think to yourself “Israel 12 points, that’s weird, I better check it out”. Like were the people in JOS’ booth playing Tetris instead of working and they just said to him “Nope, everything’s fine, can I finish the level now?”.
Agreed, maybe if they weren’t so obsessed with whipping up false excitement , they might have noticed some of the problems we all spotted.
This is how you kill Eurovision.
What a mess. I am sorry, but this Eurovision was the worst ever. I hope the Dutch and the EBU will get their act together for next year.
Agreed and the standard of songs were really poor. Altogether not a memorable contest.
Not only North Macedonia would be first, Malta could’ve gotten their deserved, first and only, 12 points as well and they got robbed even further. Honestly, EBU should name down the juries for the next year and ban them from partaking in to represent their countries’ votes.
Oh that’s why Sergey didn’t get 12 points
This was the one thing I was really suprised about – all Georgian juries put him 26th.
It’s no surprise… No one can deny that such a unanimous reaction from 5 people is more than suspicious. And Sergey was no Germany to get 0 points. He couldn’t possibly be that bad. He was just unlucky to be representing Russia. It shows how bias the jury voting can be because of some non-musical reasons… Which is very sad. In 2016 several countries did the same to Sergey. It happens every year with different participants. Russia/Ukraine, Armenia/Azerbaijan 2016 were the same. Sad. Very sad((
My country (Lithuania, not Tajikistan lmao) all ranked Polina and Sergey last in 2015 and 2016, and most of them ranked Kirkorov’s DoReDos last in 2018, so it’s no surprise and very unprofessional, especially when with Russia both times we (the public) gave them top 2 scores…
Sergey’s vocals were worse than S!sters’, to be honest. The songs are comparable. Only the presentation was better.
I don’t wanna take it away from poor Kobi. Everyone was so happy when he got at least one 12, even though in the back of my head I knew it wasn’t decided by an actual jury.
I personally still think the juries are very necessary and make sure we have a more balanced opinion, but this was a bit of a whoopsy-daisy if it actually happened.
They don’t do their job properly. They vote for the songs they like, instead of judging the artistic value. We don’t need 5 people’s taste being more important than thousands of televoters.
Even though I like Serhat and San Marino, but fourth in semifinal and tenth in the final with the public just says it all, judges are here to avoid such things (even though its nice to see that San Marino is actually able to do kinda well)
omg so what? if the people liked serhat what’s wrong with it??? we vote for what we like. if a song is trashy but fun, we vote for it and it deserves to reflect people’s appreciation. not everything needs to be serious and perfectionist gosh
Same, but he would’ve still finished 23rd, it just would be 12 points less than he had
I still think that this was made on purpose to avoid Israels hard fail with the judges.
As Belarussian judges were dismissed, they had the chance to rig this one, not only for Israel, it also gave Germany 8 more points after the public disaster and UK 5 points.
But yeah, the analysis seems to be pretty clear, and after Lina’s fail, another shade on judges (which I believe are still needed)
Also I think that overall, this ESC had some nice starting/intervall acts (not counting Madonna) but lacked in the background.
If they did it on purpose, at least do it more wisely, and don’t give the impression that the scores were rigged.
I agree with part of your point except they would’ve have known about Germany’s result until very shortly before, whilst the jury result probably was worked out the night before
* wouldn’t have known rather
Let’s not forget Spain. Spain got 6 of its 7 points from that jury.
What do I think? I think that Jon Ola Sand and whoever sits in that royal box with him weren’t doing a thorough enough job. They had a day to iron out problems like this.
I mean, every time they cut the camera to him his friends in the box just sit there staring at the audience so that’s true
I can’t understand why an aggregated vote (this+the San Marino televote) should help decide the outcome of Eurovision. It’s a weakness of the current point system and I would rather go back to before 2016 when each country only had one set of scores (jury+televote combined) to give out than have an aggregation decide the outcome.
I still prefer this system because it favours the televote. In the old system Australia would have won in 2016 and they were only 4th in the televote while Ukraine were 2nd.
Who prefers which depends on how your favorite songs would have been ranked in the other system. If it would have been better, the other system would be better, vice versa. With the old system, Czech Republic 2016 (I Stand) would have ended up at the last place with only one poor point, which would have been very painful to see.
Well, maybe it was their intention to give the lowest 10 in the overall ranking the Belarussian jury votes to not end up with a ”0 points” scenario? I think that’s a nice gesture, even though that means better performances missed out on some extra points.
I don’t think it is a nice gesture. Would Israel be happier because they were given 12 pity points?
The audience didn’t seem to mind ahaha, but I get your point
It would have been amazing on the night to have N. Macedonia winning the juryvote and Norway winning the televote (and get recognized for it) and then have the Netherlands as the overall winner after so many years. Unexpected and expected at the same time, and so well deserved for all of them. Actually annoyed that they ruined this moment if it’s true, like for real? Could have been one of the most epic and memorable results ever.
Since the juries took away Sergey’s victory for purely political reasons by giving him a plain 0 all across Western Europe, the EBU should go back to 100% televoting.
Politics are worse than diaspora voting.
If so many scandals have surfaced, imagine how many more haven’t.
I meant Sergey in 2016
Even if it’s true, it’s that moment when bottom 10 is way better than top 10… Please leave everything as it is.