During the grand final, while all of us waited patiently to hear the spokespersons revealing the national jury vote, a surprising statement knocked on our doors.
According to Martin Österdahl, the Executive Supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest, the EBU has found anomaly is the national jury voting in semi-final 2 of Eurovision 2022.
The 6 countries whose national jury was considered irregular by the EBU are:
- 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan
- 🇬🇪 Georgia
- 🇲🇪 Montenegro
- 🇵🇱 Poland
- 🇷🇴 Romania
- 🇸🇲 San Marino
Some of the national broadcasters (especially the ones that came from Azerbaijan and Romania) have requested explanations from the EBU.
5 days after the grand final, the EBU released its official statement with justifications.
As you know, the national jury can’t vote for their own country, so the investigation focused on the voting pattern between these 6 countries. Explicitly, how the national jury of each of them voted for the 5 other.
What is irregular voting?
According to the definition by the EBU, if at least 2 of the following 2 conditions are satisfied, then the voting will be defined as irregular:
- An anomaly compared to other national jury of other countries – considering the fact that all national jury are required to vote based on the same considerations.
- Do we recognize any voting pattern within the jury?
- Did the juries observe the Rules of the Eurovision Song Contest?
- Are these special patterns repeated with other countries as well?
- Based on the detected patterns, can we find any countries that benefit of these special patterns?
Insights
- The jury panel of 4 of these countries (🇦🇿 Azerbaijan, 🇬🇪 Georgia, 🇷🇴 Romania, 🇸🇲 San Marino) ranked the 5 other countries in their top 5.
- 🇲🇪 Montenegro‘s national jury ranked the 5 other countries in top 6, while Serbia was in second place (and they had nothing to do with irregular voting).
- 🇵🇱 Poland’s national jury ranked 4 of the countries in their top 4, while Georgia was in their 7th place.
- It is worth mentioning that some of these countries haven’t shown this kind of support in the previous years. This was one of the reasons for a deeper investigation.
Decisions Have Been Made
The EBU has consulted with the pan-European Voting Partner. In addition, the conflict was shared with the Eurovision reference group (that includes some heads of delegations like the ones from Armenia and Iceland). It has been decided that this voting pattern is irregular.
According to the Eurovision Song Contest‘s rules, this is one of the cases where the Executive Supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest can take action.
In this case, the national jury voting of these 6 countries have been removed (both in semi-final 2 and the grand final!). The national jury vote has been replaced by substitute aggregated results calculated based on the voting history. These results also take under consideration the voting pattern of countries of the same block voting (which also builds the pots each year).
Appendix
In the images below you can see the original national jury votes, as submitted by the national jury of there 6 mentioned countries:
🇦🇿 Azerbaijan National Jury Vote (Semi-Final 2)
🇬🇪 Georgia National Jury Vote (Semi-Final 2)
🇲🇪 Montenegro National Jury Vote (Semi-Final 2)
🇵🇱 Poland National Jury Vote (Semi-Final 2)
🇷🇴 Romania National Jury Vote (Semi-Final 2)
🇸🇲 San Marino National Jury Vote (Semi-Final 2)
Let’s examine the change in the results of the national jury before the removal after:
| Country | Points After Correction |
| Sweden | 156 |
| Australia | 118 |
| Estonia | 85 |
| Czech Republic | 76 |
| Belgium | 74 |
| Azerbaijan | 62 |
| Finland | 49 |
| Serbia | 45 |
| Poland | 44 |
| North Macedonia | 39 |
| Israel | 30 |
| Malta | 23 |
| San Marino | 21 |
| Ireland | 11 |
| Romania | 10 |
| Montengro | 10 |
| Cyprus | 9 |
| Georgia | 8 |
Any Changes?
The same 10 countries would have qualified, but with different jury rankings: Georgia, Montengro, Azerbaijan and San Marino would have upgraded their scores (but still the same countries would have advanced for the final).
You can read our full statistical analysis of the results here:
