Just like the UK, Switzerland finished last night’s Eurovision final in Basel with no points from the public, despite finishing second in the jury vote with 214 points. Although it is not the largest difference between jury and public points in absolute number of points, it is the largest margin between for a nul-pointer in Eurovision history. And just a few more votes in southern Europe might have changed that.
A larger spread of rankings for Switzerland
While the United Kingdom was mainly ranked below the 20th position by most of the national audiences, Switzerland managed to get much more positions in the 10s. It was only ranked last by one country, Malta, with Montenegro and the Rest of the World ranking it second to last (25th in all three cases, with Malta only voting for 25 countries, making its 25th place the last one).
The positions are then quite evenly distributed between 24th and 14th, with on average two to three countries having placed “Voyage” in a given position, with the exception of the 20th place, reached by Switzerland with seven national audiences.
The exception comes form Portugal, where Switzerland was 11th in the public vote. The exact figures from Portugal will likely not be published by RTP or the EBU, but the difference between 10th (Estonia) and 11th is likely to be slim, as can be seen from most televoting figures across different markets and TV programs.
The average rank for “Voyage” was 19.7, which is the fourth lowest of the Grand Final, ahead of Denmark, San Marino and the United Kingdom. This average rank would remain the same even without the San Marinese televote (which is not an actual televote but an aggregate of televoting data from different countries).
The full results of Switzerland are as follows:
| Country | Switzerland’s rank |
| 🇦🇱 Albania | 20 |
| 🇦🇲 Armenia | 18 |
| 🇦🇺 Australia | 24 |
| 🇦🇹 Austria | 15 |
| 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan | 24 |
| 🇧🇪 Belgium | 23 |
| 🇭🇷 Croatia | 21 |
| 🇨🇾 Cyprus | 24 |
| 🇨🇿 Czechia | 20 |
| 🇩🇰 Denmark | 19 |
| 🇪🇪 Estonia | 14 |
| 🇫🇮 Finland | 21 |
| 🇫🇷 France | 16 |
| 🇬🇪 Georgia | 19 |
| 🇩🇪 Germany | 15 |
| 🇬🇷 Greece | 20 |
| 🇮🇸 Iceland | 17 |
| 🇮🇪 Ireland | 20 |
| 🇮🇱 Israel | 16 |
| 🇮🇹 Italy | 23 |
| 🇱🇻 Latvia | 14 |
| 🇱🇹 Lithuania | 17 |
| 🇱🇺 Luxembourg | 23 |
| 🇲🇹 Malta | 25 |
| 🇲🇪 Montenegro | 25 |
| 🇳🇱 Netherlands | 16 |
| 🇳🇴 Norway | 19 |
| 🇵🇱 Poland | 18 |
| 🇵🇹 Portugal | 11 |
| 🇸🇲 San Marino | 20 |
| 🇷🇸 Serbia | 22 |
| 🇸🇮 Slovenia | 20 |
| 🇪🇦 Spain | 23 |
| 🇸🇪 Sweden | 21 |
| 🇺🇦 Ukraine | 20 |
| 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | 22 |
| 🗺️ Rest of the World | 25 |
How do you explain such a diverse set of positions, yet no top 10 for Switzerland? Tell us more in the comments below or on social media at @escxtra !
It seems reasonable to suggest that voters were not voting on the quality of the song, but rather against the possibility of switzerland hosting the competition twice in a row.
I think the main problem was the dark stage performance. Audiences don’t want to watch singers just sitting in the dark. The effect was similar for Austria in 2015 – a light- and motionless performance just sitting by their musical instruments when the other countries compete to make good use of the lightwall.