Talk of the day in Iceland; Songvakeppnin’s results!

Söngvakeppnin’s final was held on 3rd of March in Laugardalshöll. Six acts were qualified from the two semi final. After the first voting of the evening two acts qualified  to the super final. Dagur Sigurðson with the song “Í stormi” came in first place, winning both the jury vote and the televote. Ari Ólafsson, with his emotional performance of “Our Choice”, was in second place. However, at the super final, the result was based on 100% telephone votes. And Ari ended up winning the show! How many votes do you think they got at the super final? (First the drama, below it are the numbers)

People had problems with voting Dagur

Quite a few people noticed that their votes did not go through, when they texted or called Dagur’s number. RUV took these results seriously and announced  on March 4 that several people complained about not been able to vote for Dagur at the Super Final. RÚV decided to look into the results to see if there had been a failure in the system. Because if this was the case,  it might have influenced the result.

Following this, more people noticed that their votes, for many of the artists, did not always go through. Meaning, it wasn’t only Dagur’s fans and supporters who had problems with voting for their favorite.

After looking into it….

The following day, RUV announced that Vodafone, who is in charge of the phone voting system had looked into it.  Their conclusion was that the system was working fine and did not have a breakdown. The system is made especially for these kinds of events and  has been working well for few years now.

However, it was suggested that in a area like Laugardalshöll, where many people were caling/texting at the same time, it might lead to some radio disturbance. Therefore, it is possible that some calls may have been blocked. This means, however, that it would affect any of the participants’ numbers, not just Dagur’s.

And furthermore they said that since the results were quite clear and the difference between Ari and Dagur was big, there was no way this would have affected the result.

 Songvakeppnin’s results:  About 5000 votes between them!

It became clear that “Our Choice” really was Iceland’s choice in the end! Each vote cost 197 icelandic króna which is roughly one and a half euro. At the super final, Dagur recieved 39474 votes, while Ari got 44919 votes. Therefore, there is no doubt this was a clear victory. This also means that Þórunn Erna Clausen, who wrote the song, will represent Iceland at Eurovision for the second time. Her first participation was back in 2011 when she was the lyricist of the Icelandic entry.

What do you think of Ari’s song and himself? We did this interview with him before the show on Saturday. Have a look!