It’s time to crunch the numbers. The full result for the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest has just been revealed, and it shows quite some interesting details regarding the two semi-finals.
As the semi-finalists are announced in random order, it’s not until after the final, we get to know the full result. It’s usually quite interesting reading that reveals not only who was close to reaching the final, but also the difference between jury and televoting.
Update (22/May/2019): The EBU has changed the results, following a mistake in the aggregated votes assigned to the Belorussian jury. Below numbers reflect this change.
Grand final
It’s a discussion that comes up every year; the difference between jury and tele voting. This year we are in the special situation that Sweden won the jury vote while Norway won tele voting – and in the combined result, the Netherlands won with Italy as runner up. The Netherlands themselves scored a third place with the juries and second place with the viewers at home.
The United Kingdom finished last, receiving a total of 11 points, of which only 3 from the viewers at home. Germany scored one place higher but sadly did not receive a single point from the televotes. With those numbers, it’s easy to blame their Big 5 status for the poor results. However, with Italy’s second place and France’s 16th there must be more to it.
In Belarus, the entire jury was dismissed after their results were revealed in an interview. Their votes are based on “an aggregated result approved by the auditors”, according to EBU. This result is based on the averages of the countries Belarus shared a pot with in the Semi-Final allocation draw. During the Grand Final, their spokesperson awarded the 12 points to Israel, and also gave 8 points to Germany and 5 points to the United Kingdom.
It has since then been discovered that the jury votes given to the Belorussian spokesperson were wrong. They have now been corrected, and their 12 points instead went to Malta.
Semi-final 1
It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to many that Australia won the first semi-final. Most had predicted that outcome, from the semi-final many considered the weakest of the two. Runner up was Czech Republic.
Only two points ahead Belarus managed to qualify for the final instead of Poland. Hungary on the 13th place was a lot further from qualifying with 25 points up to the so-desired spot in the final.
Had this semi been decided based only on televotes, Hatari from Iceland would have won it with 151 points. The jury winner was Lake Malawi from Czech Republic, with 157 points. But neither was backed enough by both the TV viewers and the professional jury to beat Australia.
Semi-final 2
The second semi-final was considered the toughest one of the two. It featured most of the big favourites to win. The full result shows that the Netherlands won this semi-final ahead of North Macedonia.
This time there was only one point difference between being out and being in the final. The 10th place went to Denmark who qualified instead of Lithuania in 11th place. Things weren’t so tight between the 8th and 9th positions, where 61 points separated Malta from Albania.
Just like in the other two shows, the winner of this Semi-Final scored absolute top marks with neither jury or televote. North Macedonia received most jury points (155, and 84 from televote). Norway won the televote with 170 points, while receiving 40 from the juries. Overall winner The Netherlands received 140 points from both.
