29/05/2021
You recieved from the public vote, I’m sorry… zero points
Bar Refaeli (Eurovision 2019 host)
So… Eurovision 2021 had a dramatic voting sequence to say the least! First of all the United Kingdom (my home country) had received 0 points after the whole jury voting section was complete. Then if that wasn’t disastrous enough that televote happened. United Kingdom… 0 points… Germany 0 points… Spain 0 points… Netherlands 0 points. Multiple countries had been blanked all across the board in the televote. So why did this happen and why might even some of the countries who received points have underperformed?
Eurovision has a unique voting system! At a very basic level, countries award points to their 10 favourite songs and the country with the most points wins – sounds simple enough, right? Well in many ways it is. If you do not make the top 10 in a country’s vote – you might as well have come last, only the top 10 countries will receive points. Another factor which adds to this are the 10 and 12 point allocations. Whilst on averages alone it is the same to come 3rd in 2 countries (average 3), as it is it come 2nd and 4th in the same two countries (average 3) – the Eurovision voting system gives an additional point gap between second and third (and likewise first and second).
| Country | Voter 1 | Voter 2 | Average |
| Country A | 3rd | 3rd | 3 |
| Country B | 2nd | 4th | 3 |
| Country | Voter 1 | Voter 2 | Points |
| Country A | 3rd (8 points) | 3rd (18 points) | 16 |
| Country B | 2nd (10 points) | 4th (7 points) | 17 |
Despite this, some delegations seem to speak about “coming left hand side” (in other words top 13) as their aim and have consistently failed to meet that goal. Of course, if you sent a hypothetical song that everyone in the world unanimously would vote into 13th place, you would of course receive zero points and instead come last (despite the fact everyone unanimously agreed your song deserved 13th place). Instead looking at how the Eurovision (post 1975) system has worked – your best chance of getting “left hand side” is to send a song that will get enough first places (as these points tactically are worth more than repeated lower rankings).
This of course is by design rather than by flaw. I am sure fans and viewers across the world get far more emotionally involved, seeing a song they either love or loathe doing well at the contest than one which everyone felt was just a bit middle of the board. Indeed, the producers seem to agree with me there and introduced an exponential weighting system to the jury points to amplify the importance of song’s they had strong sentiments too coming on top, over a lowest common denominator winner. You can read about this system (and its use in San Marino’s modelled televote here). Again this ultimately means countries winning votes (or in this case jurors) is more significant than appealing mildly to many audiences. Tactically to do well in Eurovision, yes you need consistency across enough voters but you also need people to really love you as well.
But hold on, that’s just theory! Let’s dive into some of the results of the 2021 contest and see what really went on!
The 11th Place Curse
The first thing to check is who came eleventh in the various voting groups and look for any patterns.
The most immediate thing which stands out in Semi Final 1 is Romania’s Roxen receiving the eleventh spot six times. This is skewed more towards the televote which is interesting considering she was a jury qualifier but her low televote cost her a space in the Grand Final. Coming 30 points below qualifying, it is unlikely that even if she had picked up votes from all of those countries that she would have qualified but at least Roxen can draw some comfort from knowing that there was televote support there for her, it just wasn’t concentrated enough into particular countries. In Semi Final 2, the reverse situation occurs for Latvia (coming 11th 4 times with the jury and twice with the televote). Sadly Latvia finished at the bottom of their semi final but if all six of these 11th placements had been instead 10th places, she would have leapfrogged Georgia on the leaderboard.
So were 11th placements the reason several automatic qualifiers underperformed in the televote? Eh, actually no…
As far as 11th placers are considered, sure they could have saved the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) a few blushes by awarding a jury point to take them off of an overall null points and the Netherlands would have banked a few more as well BUT neither Germany, Spain, the Netherlands or the United Kingdom had any televote 11th placements either. I know, I was shocked as well!
How did they do in the televote then and what went wrong? Well to answer that I have to look at more than just 11th placements, so behold – the behemoth that is the Grand Final televote by average country rankings:
For each countries televote I have laid out the full rankings and this allows for an average to be taken (11th places highlighted in yellow/orange). In this particular instance televote winners Italy still would win the televote with Ukraine second and France third, but countries like Bulgaria and Sweden seemingly do an awful lot better – largely because they were just outside of the top 10 in a number of countries. What we however are first interested in, is currently how the 4 ‘nil pointers’ did.
We are the zeroes of our time
Dominic “Dodo” Muhrer (of the Makemakes – Austria 2015)
In 26th place… The United Kingdom (with an average place of 23.37)
In 25th place… The Netherlands (with an average place of 23.21)
In 24th place… Spain (with an average place of 22.87)
In 23rd place… hold on!
In 19th place, Germany (with an average place of 17.21)
Immediately we can see two things going on here. Firstly, to a small extent Germany does get a boost when simply applying averages (coming in around 17 a lot with the public). This aligns with the idea that a song that is worth around 17th place in the televote – will not necessarily achieve that if it is not loved more than 17th place by enough voters. Secondly, we can see that the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Spain were not only missing out on top 10s in the televote, they were doing it quite considerably.
This is where I have to highlight another bias towards extremes in the Eurovision voting system. Televoters aren’t required to rank all songs from best to worst – all they have to do is simply vote for their favourites. This means that songs outside of say a voters top 5, will likely not be voted for by that individual (unless they are a very big fan). This is a good thing. It both means that voting is simple and logistically a lot more feasible for the everyday viewer. Without the bother of ranking 26 songs they are likely going to be more willing to vote. It is also good in that it means televoting is also more weighted to people’s favourite songs, leading to more engaging results. It is at this hurdle, I believe Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom fell down on.
This also applies to countries like Bulgaria and Sweden of course, who whilst didn’t do badly in the actual televote results – perform a lot better when you consider averages. Both these songs clearly had wide appeal, getting televotes consistently in many different parts of Europe, however this appeal wasn’t strong enough to get so many points as more divisive entries with concentrated televotes. Getting that breadth but also depth of appeal is clearly crucial to Eurovision success and whilst these countries had enough breadth of appeal to give them good results – a more concentrated voter base might have pushed them up higher to greater results. This year had a very divisive televote as opposed to the more spread out jury vote and this is where these countries may have struggled to make enough of a mark sadly.
As for the “zeroes of our time” were the songs bad? No, far from it – all had their merits and I can see remaining on my (and/or my friends) playlists in the years to come! The issue is did I vote for any of them (and I did not). So at the very least I hope the artists can move forward having enjoyed the Eurovision experience, gained some exposure and go from strength to strength. My main (constructive) criticism is actually with the delegations. When picking a Eurovision song, make sure it isn’t simply ‘good’ – because in highly competitive years being just ‘good’ will not give the results you and your artists deserve.
I hope you enjoyed this somewhat lengthy ramble and found at least some of it insightful. Fingers crossed anyway! Remember to stream and enjoy your favourite Eurovision songs and if you would like to have a discussion on the Eurovision points systems, ‘robbed’ songs, or simply how you think broadcasters can improve their Eurovision results, please leave a comment and/or get in contact with us via our socials (found on the ‘Contact‘ page). Happy streaming!