Editorial: Split Results Review

Twenty-three days after the Grand Final of Eurovision Song Contest 2012 in Baku the EBU reveiled the split results of the jury and the televoting for both semi finals and the final. Sweden won the contest with 372 points, and Loreen managed to impress both the juries and the public, which voted her first in the second semi final, and the final. But other countries’ results are not really a result of a match between the professional jury and televoting. Let’s see what the results tell us:

Semi final 1:

After the first semi final, at the EBU press conference we found out that out of the 10 qualifiers, one song qualified with the support of the televoters, and wouldn’t have qualified with the juries, while another song qualified with the big support of the juries, and wouldn’t have qualified based on televoting only. Iceland finished 8th in the televoting, while the juries ranked it 11th. With the mix of jury and televoting results, they remained 8th in total. The other one is Hungary, which was placed 11th in the televoting results, and on a 100% televoting rule wouldn’t have qualified. The juries however ranked the song in 7th place, which was enough for Hungary to remain 10th in the semi final, and qualify for the final. Under the 100% televoting rule, we would have seen Switzerland in the final instead of Hungary, and if the rule was 100% jury votes, Israel would have been there instead of Iceland. Both songs which qualified with the support of one (the juries or the televoters), finished 11th in the other voting.

Russia won the televoting by a landslide (with 189 points – 9.45 votes per country), 57 points ahead of the second placed Romania. Even though Russia finished only 8th with the juries, they remained the winners of the semi final, but only 6 points ahead of the second placed Albania (who was third in televoting, and the winner in the jury votes). Belgium finished last in the televoting with only 2 points, while Latvia came last with the juries. However, when you mix the televoting results with the jury results, Austria (which came second-last in both votes) finished on the bottom of the scoreboard, Belgium was second-last, and Latvia came third-last.

Semi final 2:

After the second semi final, the EBU sent out a press release concerning the results, saying that the juries and the televoters agreed only on six out of the ten qualifiers! Two songs qualified here with the big support of the televoting, and two with the support of the juries.

The six songs where both the juries and the televoters agreed are: Bosnia & Herzegovina (who qualified for the first time with being in the top 10 with both the juries and the televoting – in 2010 they were not in the televoters top 10, and last year they weren’t in the juries top 10), Estonia, FYR Macedonia, Lithuania, Serbia, and Sweden.

First, let’s take a look at the televoting results – there was a clear televoting winner in this semi final as well, with Loreen winning the semi ahead of Željko Joksimović with 32 points (she had 180 points – 9 points per country). Lithuania was third, which was the top three of this semi final with the combined results as well. Turkey was placed fourth, while the juries ranked it 13th. In the combined vote, Turkey managed to qualify as 5th in the semi. The other country which qualified thanks to the support of the televoters (and coming 10th overall in the semi) was Norway, which came 6th in televoting but came last with the juries. Finishing 9th and 10th in the televoting results, but failing to qualify in the combined votes are Bulgaria and the Netherlands. Norway tied for 10th place with Bulgaria, but got the place in the final because Tooji received votes from more countries than Sofi did.

The juries seem to have agreed on the top two – Sweden won the jury votes as well, and Željko came second, but only four points behind Loreen. Ukraine was third in the jury votes, while Gaitana was second-last in the televoting results. Thanks to the 109 points from the juries, Gaitana qualified for the final as 8th in the semi final overall. The second “jury qualifier” was Malta, which was placed fifth in the jury votes, but came 11th in televoting. In the juries’ top ten we also find Croatia placed 7th, and Georgia placed eighth, but both failing to qualify in the combined votes.

So basically, if the rule was “100% televoting” we would have seen Bulgaria (televoting: 9th, jury: 17th) and the Netherlands (televoting: 10th, jury: 16th) in the final instead of Malta (11th in televoting) and Ukraine (second-last in televoting). However, if it was 100% jury votes, Croatia (jury: 7th, televoting: 14th) and Georgia (jury: 8th, televoting: last) would have qualified instead of Turkey (jury: 13th, televoting: 4th).

As I mentioned, Georgia came last in the televoting, and Norway came last with the juries. In the combined vote, Slovakia came last, even though they finished 15th in both the jury votes, and the televoting. There are some other interesting facts in the results of this semi final – Belarus (televoting: 12th, jury: 11th) was placed one place higher than Portugal (televoting: 13th, jury: 12th) in both votings, but the combined results worked much better for Portugal, as overall they finished 13th – three places ahead of Belarus (16th).

Final:

With topping the scoreboards of both the juries and the televoting, Sweden is the clear winner of Eurovision 2012. Loreen was voted first, with 11 points ahead of second placed Russia in televoting, while she was 123 points ahead of second placed Serbia in the jury votes. However, only five songs in total were placed in the top ten on both scoreboards – Sweden, Serbia, Azerbaijan, Germany and Albania.

As I already mentioned, Russia finished second in the televoting, 11 points behind the winner. The juries weren’t that impressed by the grannies, as they placed them just outside of their top ten. Turkey has once again got a massive support from the televoting (finishing 4th), but the juries didn’t improve their views on “Love Me Back“, and they placed it 22nd out of 26. Turkey still managed to remain in the top ten in the combined vote, and finish seventh. Romania was placed 7th in televoting, but the juries placed it 20th, which meant Mandinga were out of the top ten in the combined vote, and the same goes for Eleftheria from Greece (9th in televoting, 18th with the juries) and Jedward from Ireland (10th in televoting, second-last with the juries). Eleftheria was placed third in the jury votes of the semi final, but she seems to have lost a lot of jury support on the final night.

On the other side, Estonia was placed 6th in the jury voting, but wasn’t in the televoters top ten (they were 12th). In the combined vote, Ott managed to finish 6th as in the jury votes. Italy was tied-third in the jury votes with Albania, and scored only 56 points in televoting which ranked them 17th. In the combined vote, they managed to finish 9th. Pastora Soler from Spain finished one place below Nina Zilli in all three scoreboards – 5th with the juries, 18th in televoting, 10th in the combined vote. Moldova was placed 9th with the juries, and 13th in the televoting results. Overall in the combined vote, he finished just under the top 10 line. And once again Ukraine was voted in the juries’ top ten (7th), while she was only 20th in televoting. She came only 16th in the combined vote.

The two questions we have every year are: “Who is going to win Eurovision?”, and “Will there be anyone with no points?”. We got both answers on the night of the final, but in the split results, we do have a no pointer! Anggun from France didn’t manage to impress the public from any of the 42 participating countries, and she finished last in televoting. However, the juries ranked her in the middle of the scoreboard (13th), which was enough for her to get 23 points in the combined vote and come 23rd in the end. The United Kingdom came last in the jury votes, and 21st in televoting, which saved them from the last position. Norway who scraped through the qualification line in the semi final, came third-last in both votings in the final, but in the combined vote managed to get 7 points in total, and to finish last.