Eurovision / Eurosong 2010 Voting Analysis
Another Eurosong is behind us. This year, Germany was winner with Lena and her song Satellite. Again, interesting patterns have emerged during voting and some really interesting relations between countries can be described. Here’s the set of interesting voting infographics.
Introduction
The Eurovision Song Contest 2010 was the 55th annual Eurovision Song Contest, broadcast from the Telenor Arena in Fornebu, a suburb of Oslo, Norway. It was the third time Norway has hosted the contest, having previously done so in 1986 and 1996 and was a result of Alexander Rybak’s win at the 2009 Contest with “Fairytale”. The 2010 winner was Germany with Lena singing Satellite written by Americans Julie Frost and Dane John Gordon. Second place went to Turkey, third to Romania, fourth to Denmark, and fifth to Azerbaijan.
The semi-finals took place on 25 and 27 May 2010 and the final took place on 29 May 2010. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) announced that the voting system used in the semi-finals would change from previous years to balance jury voting with televoting.
(Thanks Wikipedia and ESC for data and some imagery)
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Balkan block vs Nordic block
We all know this – neighboring countries tend to vote for each other – sometimes that is enough for victory, sometimes it’s not. However, in this example, I’m analyzing two cases representing two blocks: Serbia (for Balkans) and Denmark (for Nordic countries).
Serbia got votes from all neighboring countries participating at the Eurosong 2010 except from Romania and Bulgaria. In total Serbia got 72 votes, 38 from neighboring and block countries (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania). That gives 52,7% of total votes for Serbia came from neighboring, Balkan block countries. The rest can be probably attributed to the large Serbian diaspora in France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Germany and Sweden (33 out of 72 votes) and vote came from Cyprus – probably due to religion reasons (Serbia and Cyprus are both orthodox Christian nations).
Somewhat surprising was the lack of any votes from Greece for Serbia.
Denmark was fairly successful at the Eurosong 2010. Like Serbia it got votes from almost all neighboring and Nordic block countries – only Germany decided to give zero to their Danish neighbors while Danes have shared their 12 votes to Germany! I’m covering cases like this a bit later in this post.
In total Danes have won 149 points. Out of that, 48 votes or 32,2% were from Nordic block (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia). In total 20 votes came from traditional Danish friends – Ireland, UK and Netherlands.
Interesting fact was that Poland and Romania gave 12 points to Denmark (there is significant part of workforce in Denmark from Romania and Poland) while Slovenia (also shared 12 points for Denmark) was pure surprise to me (given the fact that most of Southern Europe countries have shared from 2 to max 8 points for Danes).
I’ll give you 12 and you’ll give me 12
Three pairs of countries this year have decided to exchange 12 points among them. No surprises here really – Greece and Cyprus (who have basically invented this system), Serbia and Bosnia & Herzegovina (not always constant, especially if Croatia and Montenegro compete) and Turkey and Azerbaijan.
No love for neighbors
Some countries like their neighbors and their neighbors don’t like them. Two cases from this year’s Eurosong. Danes liked the German song and have awarded it with 12 points while Germans were not particularly interested in Danes and shared 0 points with them.
Same story at the Europe’s East – Belarus casted 12 votes for Mother Russia, while Russians just ignored their smaller neighbor giving them, in returm, exactly zero points. Ouch!
No love for others
Three more cases were recorded where one country shares 12 points with other and receives zero in return. Counting the before mentioned neighboring cases that gives total of 5 pairs for the 2010 Eurovision song contest.
As you can see on the map, seems that Brits liked the song from Greece but they didn’t fall for UK’s song and have returned them 0 points. Same story here with France who awarded Turkey with 12 points and received nil in return. And finally, Israel shared 12 points to Armenia while getting 0 in return.
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17 Responses to “ Eurovision / Eurosong 2010 Voting Analysis ”
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hi, do you have a list of the number of million votes that people gave to a country?
for example : how many milion people voted for germany , how many millions of pople voted for belgium …
This can also be verry interesting for making statistics.
Grtz
Not for now – but I agree – some really interesting data patterns and visualizations could be made from that!
Very cool analysis. I did some myself:
http://eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com/category/analysis/
Thanks for sharing Manuel, nice work there!