Every year, fans love to pore over the results from each edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, especially looking for differences between the jury vote and televote results. But there’s one year where the data isn’t so complete. The official results for Eurovision 2013 do not include the split totals for the jury and televote scores. Let’s take a look at why this is and figure out if we’ll ever get the full data.
The Eurovision 2013 voting situation
The voting system for the Eurovision Song Contest has evolved over the past decades and 2013 was another year of change.
Prior to 2013, each country’s jury only supplied its top ten ranked songs, while the televote ranked the full list of competing songs. From 2013, this was changed so that juries supplied their full list of rankings, not just their top ten.
However when the EBU released the full results for 2013, there was one big difference. Unlike in previous years, there were no longer split totals for the overall jury and televote scores.
The year of averages
Since the 50/50 televote/jury vote mix began in 2009, a breakdown of the totals scores for each competing country from the two voting groups had been made available.
In 2013, the EBU instead provided an average of the jury rank and the televoting rank that each competing country had received. This change was confirmed prior to Eurovision 2013, when the EBU published the updated voting rules. The rules stated:
“The combined split ranking of the televote and the combined split ranking of the jury vote will be published by the EBU’s Executive Supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest on www.eurovision.tv within four weeks after the Final.”
The new system changed the information provided about the results. For example, in 2012, Sweden came top of the televote with 343 points and topped the jury vote with 296 points, and had an overall total of 372 points. In 2013, however, all we know is that Denmark topped the televote with an average rank of 4.97 and topped the jury vote with an average rank of 6.23. We also know that Emmelie de Forest earned an overall points total of 281. A concise victory for Denmark, sure, but why did the EBU only release average ranks and not total scores?
At the time, the EBU did not give a specific explanation for the results format, but this page seems to imply that under the new voting system, the EBU considered ranks to be more useful data than scores.
The EBU did, however, explain why full voting rankings from each country’s jury and televote would not be given. It was to avoid revealing which countries had not met the minimum threshold for televoting.
The EBU said:
“To protect the fairness of the voting, the EBU does not release the split ranking of televoting and jury per country. Publishing these numbers would explicitly highlight if countries don’t meet the televoting threshold — the minimum number of televotes needed to become a statistically valid result — is and where thus only the jury voting was regarded valid. Explicitly highlighting these countries could lead to unwanted disproportionate influence on the televoting in these countries in future years to come.”
The importance of transparency
But that concern didn’t last long. From 2014 onwards, in the name of transparency the EBU published a full breakdown of both jury and televote results from all countries. This included a return of the total scores of the split results.
This decision stemmed from major concerns about problematic voting at Eurovision 2013. That year, Lithuanian media published video footage which they claimed showed Azerbaijan’s efforts at vote-buying ahead of Eurovision 2013.
It was evident that the EBU’s concern of keeping secret the countries that didn’t meet the televoting threshold was less important than the need for overall transparency with the voting results.
Publishing the full results proved to be a smart choice. In 2019, it was fan analysis of the full results that resulted in the miscalculated composite vote for Belarus being spotted and officially amended.
So why can’t the split results from Eurovision 2013 be released?
The big question is, if the original reason for not revealing the split results in 2013 is no longer an issue, then why can’t the full jury and televote totals be revealed for Eurovision 2013?
In 2013, at the time of announcing the more transparent jury rules for 2014, the then Executive Supervisor Jon Ola Sand was asked if the points per jury member would therefore be revealed for previous years. He responded:
“No, the rule changes are for the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest. According to the rules for the previous years, this is not an option.”
This is likely to also be the reason why the overall jury and televote split totals for 2013 can’t be released — it simply wasn’t allowed for in the rules for Eurovision 2013.
All jurors and broadcasters participated in 2013 with the agreement and expectation that their voting totals would not be publicly released, so the EBU cannot arbitrarily go back on this agreement.
One thing’s for sure — if the full split results for Eurovision 2013 are ever released, there will be a lot of fans and Eurovision academics happy that they can fill the one empty column in their spreadsheets.
What do you think? Should the EBU release the full split results from Eurovision 2013? Do you like analysing Eurovision data? Tell us your thoughts below!
This because of worser and worser ESC executive producers. Now its Sitze Baker even worse than previous.
Lol worse in what. His plans were amazing, but due to the circumstances he (and his team) never got to execute them. I’m pretty sure that you’re refering to Europe Shine a Light? Those were plans made in an extremely short time period, with a low budget (certainly far from the €30+M which was gathered for the real event)…
2013 was a horrible year for ESC in literally everything except for the winner and those butterflies. Horrible results (no Ex-Yugoslav countries in the final, all but one Soviet countries in the final), terrible stage design, green room was put who knows where, Petra and Linda were silly instead of funny, Smorgasboard was also silly instead of funny. Oh dear, I don’t want for 2013 to repeat.
Glad that Swedes redeem for all this in 2016.
How is no ex-Yugoslav countries in the final a horrible thing? They all got the result they deserved that year. Horrible entries even the countries themselves hated..
I said that as a Serb.
So what do you thinks of Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Moldova? Are they not count? There even 2 baltics country if you see correctly
Running through red Danish flags,
We felt a good vibe,
But we never knew what score we had,
Until it’s over and we’re reading back. 😀
P.S. Aksel please win UMK again; I loved your performance.
Thank you Robyn for tackling one of the most statistically challenging ESC topics in modern times. Can I be extremely picky and point out one possible mistake? 🙂 You wrote: “In 2013, however, all we know is that Denmark topped the jury vote with an average rank of 4.97 and also topped the jury vote with an average rank of 6.23.” I write: 4.97 was the average televoting rank (not jury rank). N.B. Denmark also topped both “average rank” figures in Semi-Final 1, but the figures were a lot closer to the competition in the semi since there were less… Read more »
I wanted to mention that last year there was an incongruence between Italian televoting released by Ebu and the one released by RAI. If RAI results were used Lithuania, that got one point there, would have qualified over Denmark…
EBU never gave a satisfying explanation to this
I figured that the EBU’s reluctance to release a more informative split result in 2013 was probably to cover for not fully vetting the jury results. Wiwibloggs itself reported that the composition of the Italian jury broke the rules, because of all the jurors being male and none of them being involved in making music or being radio DJs. Given that they missed such an obvious rules breach, I have my doubts that they would’ve bothered to check for the sort of invalid jury result that Georgia got disqualified for in the following year. Just saying that the previous rules… Read more »
Bring back Frank Naef!
Digame can change the televote results as they want and I’m not ok with that. Nobody can really check and some incomprehensible results since 2004 are explained by it.
Some of us have a good memory and still remember the signs which were made before the final saying “See you next year over the bridge”. They were that confident that they had ready signs for next year. Wondering why….
I don’t care about previous years, i really want to see the results from 2013. I remember i was shocked we never got them and a bit suspicious at that time. Having Denmark winning was not a surprise and obviously i can’t question it because the song was memorable and had a massive hype. However, having Azerbaijan as 2nd with so many points, is a bit weird for a song that everyone forgot afterwards. I rmemeber some 12pts from specific countries were very suspicious and even it was widely shared that Azerbaijan was cheating (since 2010) I remember Bonnie saying… Read more »
You seem to underestimate Azerbaijan if you think no one remembered it. It was a very good song in a very weak year. But it was the staging that stood out. The staging was probably among the best of the year, and very memorable. I still remember it today..
“miscalculated composite vote for Belarus”
Lukashenko: Hold my beer
I still cannot get over Rak Bishvilo not qualifiying.
the injustice of that is on the same level of greta 2016 not qualifying, which is to say A BIG INJUSTICE
You say Israel, I say San Marino
It annoys me so much that we can’t see the split jury-televote results per country for 2010-2013. Unless the EBU completely deleted that data, surely it must be available somewhere either through the broadcasters or the EBU itself.
well at least we got the split results in 2010, 2011 and 2012. 2013 was the only year we never got the full results.
I’m talking about the split results for each country (how each country’s televoters and juries ranked all songs)
Would also appreciate disclosure of the 1956 results! Specially of the ‘Luxembourgish jury-vote’ ?.
Never because Germany (with Walter Andreas Schwarz) would have won without the Luxembourg votes 😉
I wouldn’t be surprised if this and Mans not winning the televote were the reasons we have the dual scoring system now
Do not forget.
Belarus phone votes in the final 2019, they published only the top ten.
Ebu did not reveal between 2010-2013 which countries had a jury instead of a telephone vote plus a jury.
For example
San marino definitely had no phone vote yet ebu said nothing about it. Or for exemple Albania in semifinal 1, 2012,
Therefore, Sweden would probably have won the telephone vote in 2011 if it had not included the jury in the viewers’ points.
Since 2017, many immigrant votes have suddenly disappeared.
Great analysis, I also think Sweden won the televote in 2011 (with San Marino and Albania having only jury votes)
And yes, I still don’t understand why they didn’t release Belarus full televoting last year, it just doesn’t make sense to me
There are definitely paradigm shifts in how diaspora and immigrant votes impact televotes. Germany last year, for instance. It’s odd that Greece and San Marino’s Turkish singer did so poorly.
Serhat did poorly in all major Western countries with Turkish diaspora, which means that the whole assumption that the Turkish diaspora helped is absolutely bull…
He got points from small televoting nations (suspicious..) and countries with questionable taste.
I dunno. All the countries that voted for Serhat were either in the Balkans or generally Turk-friendly, with some exceptions (Iceland, for instance). Some televotes gave Serhat great scores in the semi and nothing in the final (like the Czech Republic and Estonia). I chalk at least some of that up to the semi-final myopia, where certain songs look better when compared to the other songs in the semi (happens every year – see Estonia in the same semi, Israel in 2017, and the Netherlands in 2016). Australia and Portugal loving a silly novelty song in the semi-final round and… Read more »
Some of it might also just be times changing. Once upon a time, the Balkan countries did great with the Nordics (especially Bosnia and Serbia), but now it takes a really special song to do particularly well with them.
I agree that Sweden must have won televoting in 2011 with a small difference.
Having Azerbaijan with so many points was very random, the song didn’t stick to you to vote it and the due were not likeable. No wonder, the song flopped after Eurovision, even in germany where they won and had full publicity.
Imagine if Sweden had won in 2011 and then Euphoria had won in 2012 LOL!
Sweden would have equalled Ireland’s record by now, and also won twice in a row like Ireland. Poor Eric Saade.
And Ebu should report all the points in Eurovision 2010, 2011, 2012
As well as the jury in the semifinals 2008, 2009 who chose a favorite in each semifinal of the songs that viewers did not have in the top 9 and other results for the jury have not been published.
“One thing’s for sure — if the full split results for Eurovision 2013 are ever released, there will be a lot of fans and Eurovision academics happy that they can complete the one rogue column in their spreadsheets”
So true – this data gap was very obnoxious when I was writing a paper for grad school.
You don’t happen to be the one who published a term paper about the contest using Helsinki 2007 as the foundation of the paper’s analysis of the contest?
I always found the 2013 voting so complicated. Why couldn¨t it have been points like every year? Instead of average rank, what’s the point of that? It only made the actual counting difficult and forced you to do maths which is not waht you should be doing..
1 point for 1st place, 2 points for 2nd place etc. up to 26 points for 26th place were added up and divided by the amount of voters.
Because the rankings and combining them made the overall points score by country. Not the televoting or jury points. Combing points give another result. The best example is 2016 which would have affect the winner. With points it was Ukraine. With ranking was Australia.
Still they should have reveal the full rankings.
Since its always local numbers its the broadcaster. EBU is after all only broadcasters, nothing more
Idk but many people suspect that maybe Azerbaijan won again, and now combined with buying votes that got headlines in newspapers all over the Europe, it would not look so good for Eurovision’s reputation, maybe Denmark didn’t even win the competition. It’s really interesting thing, but I’m afraid we’ll never know. It’s also interesting that Azerbaijan was not the same after that year in terms of results, it didn’t go well for them for many years in row after that, suddenly they send average songs, like they knew it won’t go well for them after that year so why even… Read more »
They messed up and they don’t want us to see it.
What’s even more disturbing is that you can’t even try to create a possible scenario, since mathematically those averages can’t be real taking into account the number of countries that participated in the 2013 edition… so frustrating
The reason they will never publish the results was that Azerbaijan won in 2013.
Why the downvotes?
If this system saved us from Baku 2014 it was worth it.
Azerbaijan didn’t deserve to win in 2013, it’s one of their most overrated entries ever. I’m not saying I love Only Teardrops either, actually is one of the winners I like the least (but I dislike Hold Me even more). In my opinion, Norway could have been a better winner that year.
No way they won, the song flopped after Eurovision. Maybe they found out Azerbaijan was cheating their way to the top 5 so in 2014 they flopped.
The lack of transparency of the results since the introduction of the televote in this contest is an issue for me, the televote is a good thing of course, but as much the votes of the jury are verifiable, the televote is not, the only thing we know is that is centralized somewhere in Germany, I repeat myself certainly cause I’ve already post a comment on this, but who collects and checks the televote for each countries, is it collected and checked by different people from each countries in each countries and send in Germany after directly? Or is it… Read more »
Directly centralized in Germany(Digame) since 2004
https://wiwibloggs.com/2013/05/24/eurovision-voting-is-digame-up-to-the-challenge/27540/
Thanks!
Thanks so much!
I will never trust blindly in Digame for sure, Ebu should find a way to not let this power in only one company workers.
Come on, we all understand why this happened. Azerbaijan probably won the televote that year score-wise and it would have been embarassing to admit it given the vote-buying scandals. Providing the mean average hid that fact as azeri scores must have been high in a selected group of countries (ahem) and much lower in others. It doesn’t seem likely to me that Denmark won both jury and televote that year, that was probably a statistical illusion.
The great irony is that Azerbaijan, for all their (apparent) trickery, pulled off a jaw-dropper of an anti-political vote by giving 12 to Ukraine and zip to Russia, which people can gather means the jury put Russia really low (I recall someone saying Azerbaijan’s televote gave Russia 10 points, which I buy since Russia usually scores with their televote, so that can only mean the jury didn’t like it). Scattered halves of voting results have shown up on the interwebs: a bunch of jury votes (Denmark, Norway, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Romania), and at least one televote (Italy, after… Read more »
It might help some songs, but harm others. Like Ireland.
Not quite true…it was painfully obvious to me that Azerbaijan did not deserve their victory in 2011, and I’m sure to the EBU too. Suspicions were around long before 2013.
I don’t know. To take away some of the power of the manipulated votes?
That wasn’t really my point anyway, I was more just disagreeing with the idea that Azerbaijan’s actions weren’t suspicious until after 2013.
BBC’s highly respected Panorama did a show all about Azerbaijan and the contest back in 2012. People were aware. I would encourage everyone to watch it on YouTube. Has anything changed?
My third attempt at replying. My first two haven’t shown up after 24 hours. Sorry for repeating myself if they do. Please watch BBC’s Panorama about Azerbaijan and the Eurovision Song Contest. The EBU were interviewed and clearly aware that they should not trust the Azerbaijani authorities. This was 2012.
I still can’t believe Azerbaijan scored that high in 2013, with such a generic ballad. Nothing against them in general (I really like songs like “Always” and “Drip Drop”) but “Hold Me” didn’t stand out. It’s obvious many of those votes were bought.
Sorry Fabio, but Hold Me was a crazy good act! The drama, the box and the 30 mtr-vail!
Is was also the personal favourite of the Belgian commentator. And mine also ??.
Sorry but who cares if it was a fave of the Belgian commentator?
The song flopped after Eurovision, it did worse than Norway, Netherlands and even Greece! No one remembered it (only fans)