In the aftermath of Eurovision 2019, the EBU has had to deal with a series of voting blunders — from their wrongful accounting of the Belarusian jury vote to individual jurors not understanding the voting procedure and reverse-ranking acts.
After combing through the results of the Russian jury, we’ve noticed one rather large discrepancy that suggests another voting error for Semi-Final 2. And one that may have pushed Denmark into the final over Lithuania.
As you’ll recall, 18 countries competed in Semi-Final 2. Jurors cannot vote for their own country, leaving them to rank acts from 1 to 17.
Below you can see how each juror rated Azerbaijan and Denmark in Semi-Final 2. Pay special attention to Juror C Igor Gulyaev.
During Semi-Final 2, Gulyaev awarded the lowest ranking — 17th — to Azerbaijan. This put him out of line with the rest of the Russian jury, each of whom placed Chingiz Mustafayev seventh or higher.
He also ranked Denmark first — once again putting him distinctly out of line with the rest of the Russian jury, who ranked the song significantly lower — between eighth and 16th.
Fast-forward to the grand final of Eurovision 2019, where jurors must rank songs from #1 to #25. Suddenly Juror C ranks Azerbaijan first and Denmark last — a complete reversal from Semi-Final 2.
It’s safe to assume that Juror C wasn’t having a change of heart in the grand final. It’s far more likely that he mis-ordered his ranking during the semi-final — an error we have seen before.
As we previously reported, Lina Hedlund — a member of the Swedish jury — appears to have made the same mistake during Semi-Final 2. And in 2016, Danish juror Hilda Heick made the exact same mistake as well.
This incident is particularly worrisome for Lithuania’s artist Jurij Veklenko. He finished in 11th position behind Denmark — missing the grand final by just one point.
Juror C’s error significantly boosted Denmark with the Russian jury, culminating in Leonora receiving three points from them. Had Juror C ranked Denmark last — as he did in the grand final — Denmark would have received no points from the Russian jury, which would have put Lithuania through to the final.
The revelation of this potential error comes as Lithuania is seeking clarification from the EBU about potential errors in the Italian televote.
In the EBU’s published televote, Lithuania received zero televote points from Italy. But according to the Italian broadcaster’s tally, Lithuania was due to receive one point — which would have led to a tie with Denmark. And, as the rules state, ties are broken by the televote. Lithuania would have advanced on that account, as it received 77 overall televotes compared to Denmark’s 41.
After hearing about the discrepancy in results, Lithuania’s Head of Delegation at Eurovision, Audrius Giržadas, confirmed that the broadcaster would be formally applying to the EBU to ask for clarifications about the Italian televote result:
The situation is really interesting. We, as a broadcaster, have suffered moral and rating misconduct, and we may have enough to acknowledge the error.
Speaking to LRT.lt himself, Jurij remained unfazed by the situation and says his job is to focus on the music.
I did everything I could, but it happened as it happened. Those who were in the finals were worthy of it, and I don’t see the point of unnecessarily hitting or depriving them of their place in the table.
Should the jury’s way of voting change?
A high-ranking member of a national delegation, who shall remain nameless, has told wiwibloggs that the system of ranking artists from #1 to #25 confuses jurors. He tells us that for years jurors and voters have been used to awarding points — that is, giving 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1, respectively. Asking jurors to then do the opposite and list rank ordinals — so your fave gets 1, your second fave 2, etc. — is just too confusing.
He, and others, think that national final voting systems are much more understandable. Having sat on several juries for national finals, I can agree. I’ve always been instructed to award points to my favourites, so to assign 12 points, 10 points, 8 points, etc. It’s very straightforward and there’s little room for confusion.
What do you make of all this? Should the system be changed to prevent this type of confusion? Or should jury chairpersons just stress the rules and procedure more clearly to jurors? Let us know in the comments box below.
Can the EBU just give these dopes a class prior to the voting so the audience doesn’t have to endure these twits coming out and saying oops made a mistake . Every year it’s the same . What it does is it erodes the public’s faith in a fair voting system . Or maybe make the voting procedure easier for these village idiots and just get them to tick a box beside the one act they liked. I wonder how these judges get up in the morning and tie their shoelaces ?
That, and then the fact that the Italian Jury vote in the second semifinal wasn’t correct…
love is forewer
There should be a chair or controller for each jury who can spot anomalies and correct any error before submitting the combined result. However, this could also lead to accusations of attempting to influence individual jurors.
Why don’t they just rank their top ten, giving 12, 10, 8 points and so on?
Ma’am you probably don’t understand how Eurovision works
They had that system till 2012 , then of course Sweden hosts and they have to make a random change to points system
“Rank your songs from 1 to 25 with 1 being your favourite and 25 being the worst, leaving out your own country”
Mistakes can happen, but this is… Just no
LOL what if Russia thus punished Lithuania for awarding 0 jury points to Russia previous years?
For once on a totally selfish basis I am pleased this happened simply because I much preferred Denmark. It finished on the left hand side of the board so it deserved to go through.
Off Topic: What about “Real Eurovision Housewives” with Abu Lorak, Elena (Romania 2009), Eva Rivas, Charlotte Perreli, Dana International, Kalomira & Maria Haukaas??
The jurors aren’t being asked to award the entries points, they’re being asked to rank the entries in order of preference. I can’t see what is confusing about that…
At this point, we might as well go back to the 1999-2008 system.
Moldova: 12 points to Romania
Romania: 12 points to Moldova
Norway: 12 points to Lithuania
Netherlands, Belgium, France: 12 points to Armenia (if not Turkey returns)
Denmark: 12 points to Iceland
Iceland: 12 points to Denmark
And so on…
Irrespective you know the televote winner usually ends up getting points from over 35 countries !! So disaspora alone will give you 120 points or so depending on how big your diapora is but the remaining 130+ points need to come for the song still
At first it didn’t seem out of place for me, but then in the final you Azerbaijan 1st and North Macedonia 6th (his 15th in the SF) and it gets a bit suspicious. I mean, you just need one clear instruction: “rank the following songs from 1st to 26th, being 1st your most favourite and 26th your least favourite.” I think every potential juror has the mental capacity to understand it. It may be the case that they are just not paying attention to the instructions like when the typical distracted boys in class ask the teacher for the rules… Read more »
The juries are ruining Eurovision. This voting system is a circus.
like your status here
Jury took seriously in Zena’s song – “Let’s break the rules” or in German song – “I’m sorry, sorry for the drama”
maybe we should ask the belarusian jurors how it works
embarrassing. cancel the juries for good
but as you can see from itanlian votes there is problem and with televoting
that just happened once while with the jurors it happened three times this year alone. they should focus on televote alone and make sure there ain’t problems there.
Televote alone ??? Than probably Russia and Ukraine would win every year lol
russia won the televote twice, ukraine once in 20 years… and most televote winners have been western european countries still.
Yes but u can see with televote results, that almost every country votes for neighbours same like with jury in some way ….its good to have televote and jury its better have mix results like predicted results
neighbor voting is more prevalent among the juries as the 2018 and 2019 votings have proven. no point in retaining them, they were introduced to solve the neighbor voting problem but they only perpetuate it.
The fact here is that ONE juror can change the result and have one country qualify over the other.
This means that the system SUCKS.
A fashion designer decided (by mistake or not) that Denmark should qualify over Lithuania.
Fashion designer saw potencion in Leonora instead of Lithuania
if you are not able to rank your favourites you are too dumb to be called an expert.
he had one job….
Every country should have person, wich before sending results to EBU, should ask every jury member, who was their favorite and then check if its match with scoreboard.
Anyway mistakes this year are obvious. Cant wait for EBU official statement.
And of course exactly the same thing happened by whoever communicated the Belarusian aggregate vote. We know this for sure. Perhaps a similar form was used.
I seriously can’t keep up anymore with the scandals. All I know, all i know, jury voting is a losing game. How many pennies for the incompetence of the EBU?
Your comment deserves more upvotes.
nice. see https://wiwibloggs.com/
Quite easy to solve. Increase the number of jurors to 6 (or 7) and always discard the one (or two) that deviate(s) the most from the others. If all of them are in relative accordance, no harm done, and if one or two of them do things upside down, they are eliminated.
What’s the point of having more jurors if they’re all expected to vote the same way?
Save for Azerbaijan- they don’t. And even then they only vote unanimously on Russia and Armenia
At least by having more jurors it would make it painfully obvious that there was fixing going on (eg, if 20 jurors all voted the same way, we could clearly say there was something wrong and that jury could be banned).
Let’s just cancel all these results and go to MINSK 2020
I SHARE WHAT I GOT!!!
AGREED, just let’s go to any city of the next host country – The Netherlands – either Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague or whatevs.
Did you shave your Nether lands?
I’ll shave all I got
well minsk would be the 25th option as a host city… Somewhere in Italy..
How hard is it to actually give those jury members an EXAMPLE of how they should fill in those lists? Or make a voting “rehearsal” for them. Or at least tell them to pay attention. Come on, it’s been happening forever now.
Every year we all say there are problems with the voting, yet nothing ever changes. Its frustrating. The EBU really needs change the system, but will there actually be any kind of reform in the coming years? I want to ask, do the juries sit in isolation when they judge the songs, or are they all together? I recommend: – More people on the jury (i.e. more than 5, preferably around 6-10) – Other jury members should not know who else is on the jury (list should not be made public until the end of the shows). They should not… Read more »
This is inexcusable. The nations harmed by this need to protest.
But seriously, jurors can’t understand when they are told to place a number 1 next to their favorite and keep going lower? I mean….
I can imagine how it went when the juries were voting.
Instructions: You’ll put songs in order from 1 to 17 (you can’t vote for your country) where 1 would be song you consider the best and 17 the worst.
3 unnamed jury members: Huh? That’s so confusing! So I’m giving my favourite 17 points???
1. we know only about 3 jurors
2. most probably the instructions are not given correctly
Most probably the jury members didn’t pay attention to instructions the first time they voted. It happens – especialy if the instructions are written.
Couple of thoughts on all of this.
1. The EBU need to make it harder to get it wrong. I don’t know what form or how jurors currently rank songs, but clearly it has some issues.
2. Expand juries. 8, maybe 10 people, then when mistakes do occur, they don’t sway the overall result quite so much
yea russia is known for doing things “Accidentally”…
I have already done the math for all errors in another forum, which include the juries of Sweden and Russia and the televote of Italy.
Denmark would have still prevailed over Lithuania by 1 point. 3 wrongs make a right. Lina Hedlund’s wrong vote harmed Denmark.
The only thing that changes, is Austria dropping to last place with 15 points.
How so, 1 added to Lithuania from Italian televote and 1 reduced from Swedish vote , 2 added to Denmark from Swedish vote and 3 reduced !! So it’s still a tie and Lithuania does go through
In my calculation it’s a tie. With Lithuania making the final, because of the televote.
u have bad calculation then
Eurovision 2019, for the EBU its the nightmare gift that just keeps on giving!!!.
at this point whoever tries to justify their lack of professionalism is a pure troll. This is the first year that so many people cant do a job which is not difficult. The way some juries vote, the “mistakes”, the fact that they place in the first place a song in the semi final and in the last on the final (hello montenegro jury, i am talking about Greece) are UNACCEPTABLE.
Surely the jurors get a pack containing instructions in their native language? If not, is the process confirmed to the jurors by the chief juror in native language? Why isn’t the SF versus final juror results questioned in the 24 hours from Friday’s jury night to the Saturday show? Basic errors here that fans shouldn’t be picking up in but the paid professionals.
But we don’t know how many times it happened in the past. Every year I read comments on fan sites from people studying the jury rankings about jurors which completely changed their ranking of songs between semi and final.
They can and probably will rank a song 1st in semi and rank it maybe below 5 songs from the same semi in the final but ranking it last in the final even Below songs they originally didn’t think deserved the final , doesn’t happen by mere chance !
Again I recommend a rating rather than ranking system wherein ratings for elements which didn’t change between semi and final can’t change between the shows. Read above detailed comment
No the point of contention here is not that the jurors didn’t vote correctly , the point is someone did spot these mistakes and told these jurors to vote correctly in the final. What’s baffling is why weren’t their votes corrected for the semi-final !!
I find it hard to fathom that the individual juror suddenly realized that they made a mistake in the semi and voted in a different manner in the final if the instructions given to them in the semi and final were exactly the same .
It’s so frustrating that a single juror’s mistake can have such a significant influence on the overall results. That’s what happens when you equate the opinion of a mere 205 jurors to that of the approximately 182 million televoting audience. Surely if you are going to give 205 people such power, the least you can do is ensure that they know about a rank order scale, and how to rank things based on their preference. Also, what is the role of the Chairperson in each jury? Shouldn’t they be overseeing the results and/or ensuring that their team members know what… Read more »
You mean the Lora Kvint who down voted Sergeys’s biggest opponents?
Credit where credit is due : So applause to the danish broadcaster for starting this trend of making the individual results from each country public ! This is good for the contest transparency However the current method of how juries rank the songs is the root of all biases, mistakes and random results. Even last year I had suggested a much better , less biased system wherein each juror is held accountable . But of course I’m not in a position of power and don’t have the contacts to have my idea heard to people who matter. So just a… Read more »
Also wanted to add that the points the jurors give for song composition , stageshow can’t be altered since they remain the same in semi and final. The points for vocal skills and overall feel may be changed. This will prevent jurors like Cyprus last year from putting Israel first In semi to 12th in the final
Where the hell do they find these so called professionals starting to think just scrap them or at least reduce the jury’s power to 40 or 30%. Seriously Austria and Sweden last year was just a disgrace and even North Macadeonia this year granted it was performed well and even made it into my top ten on the night but 1st place for that song was a bit much.
Is it hard to put the best song in #1 place and the worst in last place?
For professional jury yesss, even kids in kindergarden would understood better than jurors ..lol
This is all great content for the Will Ferrell Eurovision film on Netflix!
I dread this somehow… Americans can’t grasp what ESC is about. It’s not even remotely similar to American Idol, as they stated many times.
Will Ferrell is a long time fan of the contest and his Swedish wife introduced it to him apparently so I think it’s in okay hands
How has Jon Ola Sand still got a job?!
Take it away.
Good one there
hahaha or i like when he always say –“we have a valid results” ….
At this point do the juries even know what the heck they are doing when they sign up for this
I don’t know how ‘rank the songs from 1 to 18’ or whatever could possibly be confusing but there we go. Clearly the forms need to make this ridiculously clear and some kind of procedure needs to be put in place to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
I suppose it’s possible (but much less likely), that the rankings for the final are incorrect.
This is definitely a mistake – you can’t switch from a song being your favourite to your worst in the space of two days! Unless you are so unstable that you shouldn’t be a juror anyway!
I feel really sad about this. Getting to a final is a big deal for some of these artists – and Jurijus seems like such a lovely guy as well.
I can understand that your favorite songs from the Semi can drop some positions because about half of the Final songs weren’t heard before, as they were part of the Big 5 + Host or the other Semi.
But what I can’t understand is that your favorite songs became your last places and viceversa. How a song that were the worst for you became your favorites in just 2 days?!
This has been happening every year tho I remember 2015 when some Irish or Brit juror had Israel as a winner in the SF but dead last in the final. That same year the British jury had Sweden like 7th or 8th in the SF and two days laters it was their winner because one juror changed completely their mind (from 12th to put it 1st.) Another case I remember is 2018 with the Belarrusian jury. They didn’t like Eleni in the SF. Any juror had her in their Top 10 but then in the final, 4 jurors put Cyprus… Read more »
I haven’t been to the comments section here in a bit because this stuff gives me a headache, but this is a bit of pain to keep dealing with.
Also Lora Kvint’s top-3 in the final is epic: Iceland, France, Spain.
First two were my first two.
Well i think that with all those mistakes coming to light it seems like we’re gonna find out that Ireland or Austria should have been qualified also …