Tag: eurovision song contest voting

Azerbaijan for Eurovision victory?

ageographer

My probability model of Eurovision Song Contest voting is predicting victory for Azerbaijan in tonight’s contest in Oslo. The model has a high success rate but this year the contest is more open than normal with several countries in with a shout.

Predictions for the top-10 are:

1. Azerbaijan 1.14
2. Armenia 1.56
3. Israel 3.46
4. Germany 3.66
5. Turkey 4.51
6. Greece 5.42
7. Denmark 6.87
8. Ireland 7.97
9. Belgium 14.58
10. Romania 15.48

and for last place:

25. United Kingdom 133.65

…a few hours later…and the winner is…GERMANY…

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmOeISUYXuI&hl=en_GB&fs=1&rel=0]
Deserving winner but a rubbish performance for the computer model (r2 0.51 for correlation between prediction and result) but at least it got the UK result correct.

Song Contest outcome

ageographer

No surprise that Norway were run away winners on Saturday night and I would have liked Azerbaijan and the UK to have been 2nd and 3rd. The model correctly predicted the winning entry but, overall, there was a less strong correlation (r2 value 0.46 compared to 0.75 – 0.85) than in previous years between predicted placing and actual ranking. As usual, the winning entry was judged by most people, irrespective of geographical or political affinity, to be the best in terms of song and performance and it is unlikely that the modified voting system made any difference.

Our website songcontestvoting.com crashed during the contest due to unprecedented visitor numbers. We will be moving to a dedicated server for next year’s contest and accepting advertising!

Norway 12 UK 0

ageographer

The first run of our “Eurovisionomics” model for 2009 indicates that Norway are clear favourites to win the Eurovision Song Contest next month in Moscow. The model predicts another disappointment for the UK with a finish in the bottom half of the results table suggested. The model takes into account various factors including performance in the last five contests and the extent to which countries benefit from “bloc” or friendly voting patterns.

Norway 12 UK 0

ageographer

The first run of our “Eurovisionomics” model for 2009 indicates that Norway are clear favourites to win the Eurovision Song Contest next month in Moscow. The model predicts another disappointment for the UK with a finish in the bottom half of the results table suggested. The model takes into account various factors including performance in the last five contests and the extent to which countries benefit from “bloc” or friendly voting patterns.

Eurovisionomics

ageographer

Following Russia’s victory in the Eurovision Song Contest our prediction proved surprisingly correct and was picked up by various media outlets as further evidence of neighbourly voting ruining the contest and the chances of nations like the UK from ever winning again.

The Eurovisionomics analysis had looked at those countries who’d received unusually high scores from the same country on at least four occasions in the past 6 years. Such occurrences were less likely to be attributed to chance and indicate that other factors may motivate voting. Based on this it was concluded that if Russia’s entry was half-decent then their strong showing in this Eurovisionomics analysis should see them through to victory. Further details here.

However the Eurovision Song Contest Voting website has always taken the view that neighbourly voting does not determine the song contest winner. We therefore excluded all votes cast in the 2008 contest that were above the country’s average (+ the standard deviation). This removed former Soviet states votes for Russia and other nations who’d apparently scored a song well above its true value as determined by the majority of the other competitors. The outcome made little difference to the ranked results with Russia still being the clear winner. The exercise was repeated for every contest since 1957 and revealed that without voting bias Russia may well have won in 2007 (they actually finished second).

As for the UK, removing “friendly” votes from the 2008 contest left us with “nil points” – probably well deserved considering we entered a talent show runner-up with a song that managed number 67 on the singles chart.