Comments on: Is Eurovision fair?

By: Iain

Iain — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:12:36 +0000

@MarkR –

1) Speak for yourself, I watch Euroviz despite Wogan’s increasingly tedious whining about political voting, not for it.

2) Yes, our song was REALLY bad. Unlike Bosnia Herzogovina, who I thought was one of the best all evening.

on general note, though:

3) Top tip, Song For Europe voters: the rest of Europe does not watch the UK’s X Factor series. Choosing the rubbish Errol Brown impersonator just because you recognise him from that show is therefore a bit blimmin’ pointless.

Yes, there is an element where Scandinavians are more likely to vote for Scandinavian pop music, both because they like it, and due to the many Norwegians that live in Sweden and so on. But until we stop entering absolute rubbish we won’t stop coming dead last.

By: Lady Lu

Lady Lu — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:29:37 +0000

Typo sorry. Swap far for fair. I’m human after all.

By: Lady Lu

Lady Lu — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:28:55 +0000

Howsabout in future we just do a lottery? Let God decide. That’s as far as any fixed vote.

By: MarkR

MarkR — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:03:27 +0000

Almost all of the countries in Eastern Europe will vote for their neigbours. Russia is bordered by many countries on its European border, most of which voted for them.
Scandanvian counties will vote for their neigbours (Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland) and former Yugoslav countries will give each other the vote, which was why Serbia won last year, the former Warsaw Pact and Soviet countries will vote for Russia, nobody can deny that people are voting their neigbours, the only reason people in the UK watch it anymore is to laugh at Wogans smart arse comments. The show has become a joke now. Yet both the UK and Ireland are techically neigbours and we always give eachother points so i suppose we’re not innocent either but it seems to me its only the Western European countries that are voting fairly.
The UK is an island, so we dont really have neigbours except for Ireland which is also an island. While we usually have had songs, none of them are bad enough to come in last. Even Bosnia was above us and they were terrible.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:52:44 +0000

Mat – you are mostly right, except that while constituency sizes are reset with boundary redraws (for the most part, give or take a few), the demographics of swing seats are not reset, leading them to still be swing seats afterwards. My analogy isn’t perfect (country size in a proportional vote v. margin size in a FPTP vote) but my point was people are willing to tolerate inequality of vote weighting &undue influence in domestic politics far more than in Eurovision (no pop culture figure to my knowledge has ever been given as much coverage complaining about election results as much as Wogan’s annual rants about Eurovision).

Incidentally the moans about the smaller countries having a larger vote were not an issue when the UK regularly got votes from smaller more Anglophile nations such as Malta, Cyprus, Ireland and the Scandinavian countries, and had we not got six points from San Marino this year we’d have been dead bottom, but that’s just an idle observation…

By: MatGB

MatGB — Tue, 27 May 2008 17:22:02 +0000

Chris, while I disagree that country size weighting should come in (given it’s just a song contest after all), but the differential between MPs is different�each constituency size is reset to rough parity with all others every 10 years, that isn’t the case with Eurovision.

Yes, swing voters in marginals have more power but that as a result of the analysis of many many iterated series. If there were only two clear winners of Eurovision for a period of time and a few countries switched votes to determine a winner, then your analogy might work better, surely?

John�each country has the same number of votes as each enters one song and has one state broadcaster contributing money. It’s long enough and horrible enough as it is without more entries.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:07:05 +0000

Perhaps you should all look closer to home before condemning so easily. After all when voting in general elections (the real, important kind, that choose the Prime Minister and everything), a few dozen swing voters in the likes of Crawley and Sittingbourne have far more say in the matter than thousands of voters in Bolsover or Buckingham.

By: John F

John F — Tue, 27 May 2008 08:15:30 +0000

I’m with Rob. It doesn’t make any sense why Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (combined population ~6 million) have the same voting power as the UK, France and Germany (combined population ~200 million).

By: Rob

Rob — Sun, 25 May 2008 23:16:01 +0000

What would be fair is to weight votes by population. There’s no good reason why Andorra should have as many votes as Germany, for example. Or perhaps national television audience for Eurovision. Perhaps part of the resentment at the perception that all these places that didn’t even used to be countries winning it is that they are really mostly pretty small. But then, it is only Eurovision; it’s not like it really matters.

By: MatGB

MatGB — Sun, 25 May 2008 23:10:06 +0000

Every bloody year…

A lot of analysis I’ve read over the years (because it’s voting geekery) points to voting favouring linguistic awareness. It used to be English songs were mostly favoured as there were three English speaking member countries and many spoke it as a second language. Now it’s slavonic languages, especially those with very few differences (former Yugoslav countries speak serbo-croat dialects, etc). Plus Russia has an advantage as many of its neighbours have substantial Russian minority populations, and is also a major centre of Orthodoxy these days.

Of course certain wins buck the trend�Lordi got every goth, rocker and loon out to vote for the first time ever, for example. But yeah, agreed, it’s just bloody Eurovision and people should stop whinging as much.

By: Marie

Marie — Sun, 25 May 2008 14:38:52 +0000

Hi Chris. Just a little something from me: There is a difference between Poland and, lets say, Ukraine. The Polish have had a dislike towards Russians for centuries and it has nothing to do with communism. It is not true that post-communistic countries stick together or that they like Russia (they were occupied by them for a long time). It depends on other aspects. The former Soviet Union countries are still under the influence of Russia and besides their own language, they speak Russian as well, due to many Russians who live there and were “installed” to balance the original nation (just like the Chinese in Tibet). I am Czech and we didn�t vote for Russia just because the guy wasn�t so special at all, but because we do have many Ukrainian immigrants here, we gave some votes to Ukraine (just like last year). I do think televoting is unfair because Scandinavian countries stick together and also former Yugoslavia does the same together with former Soviet Union countries and of course immigrants in Western countries do their share and should I dare to say also people of the same religion…? :-) The whole contest is not about music, it is about politics and selfishness. Countries that have a few neighbours get less votes and those who have many or share the same language get higher score. The point is, next time more countries will vote only for their neighbours and won�t care about the music performance. It is frustrating to see talented people being ignored just because they don�t belong to the proper “group” … Your other point was about the jury votes sometime ago. Maybe you should also consider how many countries were participating back then, I guess that’s why they got the title so many times. …But to be honest with you, judging from all the contestants of this year, I liked the Polish singer the most… ;-) And yes, you�re right, it�s just bloody Eurovision. The vision of Europe………….. :-)