An Alternate Universe: Eurovision 2017 Under the Old Voting System

Just yesterday, the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 in Kyiv, Ukraine took place. After a thrilling show, Portugal’s Salvador Sobral was crowned the winner with his song, ‘Amar Pelos Dois’. Under the current voting system, Salvador won the contest with 758 points. Today, we take a look into an alternate universe, in which the contest was hosted in Russia following Australia’s win last year with ‘Danny Im’ (Yes, Dami was born as a man in this universe), and the old voting system is still used, to see if the result will be the same!

What’s different between the current system and the old one?

The current system uses two completely different sets of points for the televote and the jury vote. These sets of points are then added together at the end of the show to reveal the result.
The old system uses just one set of points, using a combination of the televote and the jury vote. The average rankings in the televote and the jury vote for each of the participants is calculated, and then these rankings are used to determine the points awarded to each entry.

Remind me: what were the actual results this year?

The results of the first semi-final:
The results of the second semi-final:
The official scoreboard for the final:

So, what happened in our parallel universe?

Semi-Final 1

The first semi-final in our parallel universe had some strange differences. Due to a technical fault, Sweden’s Robin Bengtsson was thrown off the back of his treadmill as it suddenly increased in speed. Azerbaijan’s now rather plain performance was described as “severely lacking a man wearing a horse head on a ladder”. Most shockingly, whilst Danny Im performed his new single as an interval act, one of the Buranovskiye Babushki from 2012 invaded the stage and flashed the audience. Security immediately tackled her to the ground.

Results

The results for the first semi-final are very similar to the real results. Portugal is still a runaway winner, with Moldova also well ahead of third place Sweden. The only change in the top 10 is that Armenia and Australia have swapped positions!
Finland, which shocked many fans by not qualifying, is now only 11 points away from qualifying, rather than 23. Georgia has dropped from 11th place to 13th, whilst Albania has jumped from 14th to 12th.
Other than this, most of the differences for this semi-final are very minor.

Semi-Final 2

In our parallel universe, the second semi-final also had some differences. For example, the Croatian entry, Jacques Houdek, actually did perform half in drag, as many fans had speculated. The Norwegian mask continued to fail to light up, leading to JOWST throwing a tantrum mid-performance, and the Romanian act resulted in several audience members being injured by a rogue cannonball. Koit Toome & Laura were also much smarter, and sung about being lost in Lisbon.

Results

The results for the second semi-final include some surprises! The winner of the semi-final is still Bulgaria, with a massive lead over second place, which now belongs to The Netherlands. Bulgaria still has the highest score in the semi-finals, the same as under the current system.
The biggest change in this semi-final is that Denmark is no longer a qualifier; they received 45 points, but so did Switzerland! The tiebreak rule under the old system was that the country that received points from the highest number of countries comes out on top. Switzerland received points from 13 countries, whereas Denmark only received points from 12 countries, meaning Switzerland is the qualifier.
There are two other tiebreak situations in this semi-final; The Netherlands receives points from every country, whereas Hungary receives points from every country apart from Malta. Serbia receives points from 10 countries, beating Ireland‘s 7.
San Marino becomes the only country in this year’s semi-finals to receive the dreadful nil points!
Israel drops from 3rd place to 5th, and Romania also drop from 6th place to 8th.

Grand Final

The grand final featured many dazzling performances. The show began with a 20-minute long bombardment of facts about Russia, which Russian media says captivated the audience. O. Torvald from Ukraine kept their national final staging, except they ended their performance by actually blowing up when the timer hit 00:00. Once the audience had calmed down from the apparent terror attack on Russia, the show continued with the Italian performance, which featured a breakdancing turkey on stage.

Results

Ok, first things first. Portugal, of course, still wins, but look at that score. Notice anything special? Yes, Portugal would’ve broke the record for most points ever received in Eurovision. The previous record of 387 points was set way back in 2009 by Alexander Rybak’s ‘Fairytale’. Portugal’s 417 points smashes this record! In our parallel universe, we’re all freaking out!
So now that we’ve got that big shock out of the way, let’s move on down the leaderboard…
Moldova and Sweden have swapped places; Moldova is now 5th, Sweden is now 3rd. Similarly, France has taken Australia‘s 9th place, whereas Australia has taken France’s 12th place.
Belarus have also jumped up from 17th place to 14th, and Greece have jumped from 19th place to 16th. Cyprus have also made quite an improvement, moving from 21st to 17th place. However, the United Kingdom fall from 15th to 18th place.
Israel move from 23rd place to 19th, but the biggest change is from Austria, who drop from 16th place to 23rd.

 
As much as we knew that Portugal had won by a massive margin this year, it’s still a huge shock to see that they would have actually beat the previous points record!
You can take a look at the details of the voting here.
Are you as shocked as we are at how the results would’ve turned out under the old system? Would you have liked to see Portugal smashing previous records? Let us know in the comments below!