Over the past couple of days, we’ve been looking at televoting scores from all over Europe. There, we saw the United Kingdom averaging lower than #23 in the final and the evaporating douzes for Moldova. Today, we take a little side road and check out a jury that had a change of heart… What happened to Poland and their jury?
Poland: Greece and Iceland..?
The change of heart in the Polish jury is very clear to see. The two countries in question are Greece and Iceland. In the semifinal, Poland’s jury awarded Stefania their top marks. All jury members of Poland ranked Last Dance in their top four, with two jurors ranking Greece first. A solid douze for Stefania is the way to describe her score there.
However, for the Grand Final this all changed. Greece received no points at all from the Polish jury. The twelve this time around went to San Marino, who had finished in second place in the semifinal. The #3 in the semifinal vote of Poland’s jury, Switzerland, now ended up as #4. Greece instead finished as #11, with two jurors ranking it as low as #19. These two jury members (B and C) had Stefania top two in the semifinal (#1 and #2). Was there a sudden change of heart or did something else happen?
A closer look suggest the latter may not be completely unthinkable. For that, we need to look at the scores Poland gave to Iceland. Daði og Gagnamagnið scored an eighth place with the Polish jury in the semi, with Juror A not even having Iceland down as a qualifier (#13). The other four jury members ranked it either at #7 or #8.
Once again, this all changed in the Grand Final. Iceland suddenly received ten points from Poland, with two jury members ranking it first. Both had ranked 10 Years as their #8 in the semi. The same Juror A, who didn’t think Iceland should have qualified for the Grand Final as they ranked it at #13, now awarded Daði their #2 spot. Both jury members that had ranked Greece as their #1 in the semifinal now picked Iceland as their #1 in the Grand Final. Remarkable, to say the least.
In the table below, you can see how the two votings for Greece and Iceland compare.
| POLAND | Juror A | Juror B | Juror C | Juror D | Juror E |
| Semifinal: | |||||
| Greece | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
| Iceland | 13 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 7 |
| Final: | |||||
| Greece | 15 | 19 | 19 | 8 | 14 |
| Iceland | 2 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 4 |
Change of heart?
A change of heart is definitely not uncommon in the world of Eurovision. Some jurors certainly feel the quality of a performance having an impact on their choices. However, and here’s the interesting bit… We all know that the Icelandic performance was exactly the same. Literally… Because of a Covid-19 infection, the Icelandic performance in both the semifinal as the Grand Final was the recording of their second rehearsal. There is no logical way to explain the sudden change of heart in the Polish jury. Therefore, we might need to look into possible scenarios that caused the change.
In the past, we have seen mix-ups with the jury more than once. Back in 2019, the Belarusian jury vote was calculated upside down. That eventually resulted in not John Lundvik from Sweden, but Tamara Todevska from North Macedonia ending up as the winner of the jury vote. We’ve also seen several jury members in the past ranking things upside down.
Now, in the case of Poland, an upside down vote seems unlikely. After all, semifinal big hitters San Marino and Switzerland were still big hitters when it came to the Grand Final. Therefore, it’s fair to assume that they didn’t turn their entire vote upside down. However, the question that we are asking ourselves lies in the way the juries submit their scores. If the juries submit their scores based on the running order, we can’t find a logical explanation for the change of heart.
However, if the list of countries the jury receive is alphabetical, we might have found our answer: In both the semifinal and the Grand Final list of countries in an alphabetical order, as we see them on the Eurovision.tv website, Greece and Iceland are back to back. All it would then take for a mix up is to swap them around, write them down in the wrong row or simply confusing the order in which it needed to be done.
We do not know what exactly happened here. Maybe there was a mix-up, maybe the Icelandic and Greek songs really changed in the way the Polish jury saw them. Also good to add is that, if there’s a mix-up, we don’t know which order was correct: Was the semi correct and did the Polish jury love Greece? Or was it the final and did they think Iceland was great?
What do you think about the results in the jury of Poland? Let us know! Today, we will also be diving into the televoting scores of countries like France and Finland . Stay tuned! Below you can see the list of our previous televote analysis articles:
- 🇲🇩 Voting quirks: Moldova’s evaporating televote support
- 🇮🇹 Italy scored top three in Eurovision televoting with over 65% of the countries
- 🇺🇦 Ukraine lands top three finish in 42% of televoting countries at Eurovision
- 🇩🇪 Germany avoids bottom two with every televoting in Eurovision final
- 🇪🇸 Spain records bottom three finishes across the board in Eurovision televoting
- 🇬🇧 60% of televoting countries put the United Kingdom bottom two at Eurovision 2021
- 🇳🇱 The Netherlands finish bottom three in Eurovision televoting with 63% of the countries
It can be some form of tactical voting
Since all jurors in Poland changed their votes, this may mean that they vote based on what other people think / want and do not vote individually.
Slightly off topic, though still about the Polish jury, I’d be very interested if someone could explain how the jury rankings are calculated so that I can understand how the UK missed out on any points.
The combined rankings of all 5 members of the Polish jury were:
Finland 49
UK 59
Belgium 67
Russia 70
but the points awarded were:
Finland 2
UK 0
Belgium 3
Russia 1