Local Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen has received news from the EBU that no voting changes are being introduced for Eurovision 2024.
This means that the semi-final qualifiers will once again be determined by a 100% televote process and will likely include a Rest of the World category as well. In the grand final the national juries will continue to determine 50% of the overall result, with the public televote determining the other 50% themselves.
A Call for Change
In the past few Eurovisions, the jury vote has been put under scrutiny and criticism by fans and broadcasters. This is largely due to discrepancies between the entries that benefit from the jury vote, and the songs that receive generous televoting scores. This often has the effect that certain songs will be ignored or less favored by one of the votes, but do extremely well in the other.
In recent years, this has become more apparent in entries such as Azerbaijan’s “Fade to Black” (2022) which qualified for the Grand Final, andthen received three twelves from the juries, although its combined total televote score across both the semifinal and the Grand Final totaled to a meagre three points. On the other end of the spectrum lies Norway, whose entries “Spirit in The Sky” (2019) and “Queen of Kings” (2023) did poorly with juries, and yet were put 1st and 3rd in their respective year’s televotes.
These discrepancies, as well as the allegations of point swapping going along between countries, have prompted the EBU to change the ruling in the semifinals – All entries that participate in the semifinal now have to qualify via televote, with the juries remaining as part of the vote in the Grand Final. Martin Österdahl, Chief Executive Hotshot of Eurovision, has been reported to desire a complete abolition of juries – largely because of how difficult they are to monitor.
This decision to remove the jury vote from the semifinal had an immediate ripple effect in 2023. The finale line-up provided the professional juries with fewer options they normally would have went for, which led to Sweden’s Loreen dominating in the jury vote with her song “Tattoo”, and helped her establish an insurmountable lead of 340 points to the other favourite, Finland’s Käärijä, who had to settle with a score of 150. Although Finland won the televote with an impressive 376 points, receiving the maximum 12 points from 18 countries, they were unable to catch Sweden, stranding themselves in second place.
Broadcasters that traditionally do better in the televote have called to dial back the jury power in the wake of Loreen’s victory last year. Norway’s NRK have taken the lead, with Norwegian Head of Delegation Stig Carlsen implementing a 60/40 split in favour of the televote during the Norwegian selection, Melodi Grand Prix. The change took immediate effect when the jury and fan favourite entry, KEiiNO, lost do the audience favourite Gåte by a mere five points – if the 50/50 split had been in place, KEiiNO would have won instead.
The Origin of the 50/50 Split Vote.
Traditionally, Eurovision winners have been decided by a jury vote since the very beginning – unlike the juries of today, there were fewer regulations who could be on the jury. Juries consisted of ten people and had to include at least one woman. Some countries such as Spain often went with so-called “demoscopic” juries, a broad jury of laymen (florists, hairdressers, teachers) that served as a sample size representing the audience at home. One time, in 1990, the Italian broadcaster RAI forgot to assign a jury for the 1990 contest, causing the Yugoslav hosts to mobilize their own back-up jury to give the points on Italy’s behalf – Italy would then go on to win the contest.
These ten person juries then decided all of the votes between 1956 and 1996, providing the points required. Although the way points were distributed and tallied changed over time, the juries themselves did not. Until 1997.
It wasn’t until 1997 that technological advancements allowed for telephone calls to be used as votes in Eurovision. Televoting, as it later came to be known, had already been implemented in several domestic selections, but the 1997 contest had five countries (UK, Sweden Germany, Austria and Switzerland) trial a televote system to replace the jury, which allowed them to democratize their vote and allowing audience members at home to have a say in their country’s vote. The trial was a resounding success and after the 1997 contest, all participating countries gradually switched to full televote, with 2004 becoming the first year where every participating country (other than the microstate of Monaco) elected their favourite via phone calls.
The televote however coincided with two other majory changes – the abolition of the Native Language Only rule and with the influx of Eastern European countries who had a certain level of cultural overlap – this resulted in countries often casting votes for their neighbors, or expats supporting for their country of origin, which upended the balance that existed before. Countries that struggled during the jury era, such as Greece, Russia and Turkey were suddenly allowed to sing in English and became dominant Eurovision powers, locks for the top ten thanks to their large expat vote.
On the flip side, this also led to countries without such advantages to suddenly do much more poorly than before. The United Kingdom and Ireland, the two most successful countries in Eurovision at the time, experienced streaks of failure that still haven’t fully recovered from. The Netherlands, which had won the contest 4 times and was a consistent top 10 placer under the jury era, experienced the longest non-qualification streak in Eurovision history, not seeing a single final between 2005 and 2012. The circumstances led to an increase in desperation at the contest, where gimmicks became more prominent as a hail Mary to reach a finale – successful examples include Lithuania’s “We are the winners” which placed 6th in 2006 and Belgium’s “Sanomi“, a song in an imaginary language, which went to finish second in 2003. As qualification strategies became laced with increasedly desperate, inane novelty, the prestige of the contest dropped, now being seen as a laughing stock with predetermined results.
As finale line-ups tended to now almost fully consist of Eastern European and Scandinavian countries and whatever gimmicks Western Europe could eke out a narrow qualification with, the EBU decided to make a few changes: First, they split the big semifinal that had been taking place between 2004 and 2007 into two smaller semifinals at the 2008 contest. This was followed by the re-introduction of juries in 2009. Juries were now closely monitored to avoid bias and collusion – they had to consist of five music industry professionals (of sorts) from the home country, and the jurors were not allowed to publicly speak of their votes before the end of the Grand Final. They were to rate the songs on a broader spectrum, rewarding skill, refinement, depth. Eurovision 2009 showcased the same system we have now, with televoters deciding the qualifiers. After the success of juries in the 2009 Grand Final, they were introduced into the semifinals as well.
Under the 50/50 consensus system (2010-2015), the contest regained some of its prestige. Higher placements were given to stronger music, and most countries started sending in more well-rounded and serious entries. The ethnic vote still existed, but was no longer a dominant, oppressive factor. The qualifying rates adjusted themselves to be more balanced. Anyone could make the finale now, or miss out. As of 2024, only Ukraine have maintained a 100% qualification rate, with dominant countries such as Turkey, Greece, Armenia, Serbia and Sweden missing out on a final at least once. With the combination of democracy and technocracy, the results rewarded frivolity and quality alike.
The system however was not perfect – if a jury downvoted a certain entry, and that entry won the televote, its potential point yield would be sliced in half, getting no more than 6 points – although it won the favour of the audience. Conversely, entries that the audience cared less about but the jury appreciate would be given high points in the combined vote, not necessarily reflecting the audience’s preferences. This became a point of contention in 2015, after Måns Zelmerlow placed first after being first in the jury vote and third in the televote, the first winner to not win the audience’s favour in their year since the introduction of televotes. Italy, which comfortably won the televote had to settle with third place. On the other side of the spectrum was host country Austria, who placed joint last place with 0 points, although Austria would have received a generous 42 points if it was jury vote only.
The 2016 contest saw another change to the alleviate some of these problem: the jury and televote were fully separated, each having equal weight and each being counted individually. Every country now had two sets of points to hand out. This change immediately impacted the winner, allowing Ukraine’s Jamala to beat Australia’s Dami Im for first place. Had the combined vote still been in place, Australia would have won instead. The televote winner, Russia’s Sergey Lazarev, finished third under either system.
Since then, the televote has had the most influence in determining who won, with Loreen’s victory at last year’s contest being the first instance since 2015 where the winner won did better in the jury vote than in the televote.
As is often the case with electorial systems, they can always be gamed, played, manipulated. The way Eurovision tallies its points is always going to influence which entries get chosen or not, either by affecting the criteria for internal selections or deciding which acts get to participate in the national selection. Once countries crack the code of how to get the system to work in their favour, they will use it for their own benefit. My personal conclusion is that there is no “ideal” solution, other than updating the rules from time to time before the meta becomes stale. Changing the way points are tallied and distributed every 3-4 years will keep Eurovision fresh and unpredictable, and deter certain delegations from dominating the game with cheesy strategies. Eurovision should be about the music at the end of the day, and systems that reward the best songs should always be prefered and refined.
Regardless, the system that the EBU have introduced last year is going to stay on for this year as well. Whether there are further changes on the horizon for 2025 remains yet to be seen.
What do #YOU think? Was keeping the voting method the same the correct move? Let us know on social media @ESCUnited, on our forum page, or on discord!
