Eurovision 2022 is over, and in the days following the Grand Final, like any other year, we take time to dissect through the results of the contest. Since 2016, part of that work is also to try to imagine the results we would have gotten if we hadn’t changed the voting system. This year, it is slightly more difficult than usual.
After checking who would have qualified in the “old system” yesterday, we now look at the alternative results of the 2022 Grand Final. If you are curious about our methodology, we explain everything at the end of the article.
The results of the Grand Final
Here are the results of the Grand Final with the “Old System”, with an indication of how each country would move in the rankings. Scroll down if you want the detailed scores.
A comfortable victory for Ukraine and a new runner-up
Without surprises, Ukraine’s victory would not have changed in the ancient system. With 343 points, Kalush Orchestra would still have been clear winners early on during the results’ announcement. However, just like with the current system, this would not have been a record victory. Indeed, the lower Ukrainian score with juries stops “Stefania” from reaching the levels of “Heroes” (365p in 2015), “Euphoria” (372p in 2012) or “Fairytales” (387p in 2009). It remains far away from the current record holder, “Amar Pelos Dois” (758p in 2017, more than 400 with the old system).
The three acts that came after are Spain, the UK and Sweden. They remain close to eachother, like in the actual results, but Spain would have been the runner-up. Chanel gets help both from her stronger televote and her more consistent performance.
Indeed, a stronger televote helps her since five of the six countries with canceled juries only have their televotes taken into account : the jury points favoured the UK slightly more. From the televote of the five countries (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania, Poland, Montenegro), Spain received 38p, against 18p for the UK.
Moreover, Chanel’s actual score was almost equally shared between juries and televote (231p and 228p), while the UK was more divisive, with 100p between juries and televote. The old system favours songs that have similar jury and televote scores over more divisive acts.
Much movement in and out of the Top 10 and beyond
As you can see in our scoreboard, some songs have heavily dropped or surged accross the table. Greece and Switzerland lose 6 spots, which makes the former leave the Top 10. Switzerland loses 5 spots, and Moldova loses 4. This is balanced by other countries going up, like Armenia or Estonia.
The reason behind this is the same as explained above. Moldova mainly relied on televote, while Switzerland and Azerbaijan relied on juries (which was their loss in the “alternative” semi-finals). The other countries had a more consistent distribution of votes and it shows when changing the system.
The detailed results
Here is the full scoreboard, if you are curious about your country’s “unified” rankings.
A little reminder : what is the Old System?
The “old system” was the system used before 2016, when each country only gave one set of 1-to-8-10-12 points to the rest of Europe.
The actual system we are using for these alternative results is the one used between 2013 and 2015, with the 2014 public rulebook used as an official source. Basically, the full rankings of a country’s jury and the full rankings of their televote were put together, and any tie between songs was broken by giving the song with the best televote the best position.
We recalculated the results of each semi-final and of the final this year, not forgetting to recalculate the jury rankings. Indeed, the way the individual rankings of each juror are turned into a common ranking changed in 2018. There was however one issue, or perhaps six.
The cancelled juries
During the Grand Final, we learnt that the votes of six national juries had been cancelled by the EBU, because of irregular voting patterns. With the current system, these votes have been replaced by the aggregated results from other juries. These “other juries” have never been publicly revealed but it is clear since 2019 (when the Belarussian results were similarly replaced) that the EBU uses juries from the countries sharing the same allocation draw pot. This explains, for example, why Azerbaijan and Georgia had the same jury results.
In the old system, aggregated results are unheard of, according to our research. When countries had a “jury failure” or irregularity, only their televote was used for scoring points. This is what happened in 2015 with Montenegro and North Macedonia. Thus, we have chosen to only use the televote of five of the six countries : Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Romania and Poland.
San Marino is an odd one : its televote is already an aggregation of other televotes, because San Marino does not have a national telephone network. As such, before 2016, only its jury was used, and in previous years we chose to only use the San Marinese jury in alternative results. This year, with the jury being cancelled, and without any public rule considering the possibility, we have chosen to discard the San Marino votes altogether.
Note that the San Marino results would not change much to the scoreboard. The winner and the runner-up could not change, for example.
What do you think? Do you prefer these results over the actual ones? Is the new system better? Tell us in the comments below or on social media ! Be sure to stay updated by following @ESCXTRA on Twitter, @escxtra on Instagram and liking our Facebook page for the latest updates! Also, make sure you follow us on Spotify for the latest music from your favourite Eurovision acts.
This article is a journalist trying to convince us Ucraine would have won, even if Eurovision had not cheated with the votes of six countries.
Can\’t understand why anyone would have voted for that awful Spanish cliche. 1990s rubbish, bad voice, bad music, bad song and a dated tired old dance routine.