The first major change to the voting system for years has just arrived and the whole Eurovision community is discussing the big changes in the way the points will be revealed during the show, especially in the grand final. But what would last year’s results have looked like using the new voting system? 

Over the years we have seen a lot of changes in the voting system like the re-introduction of the juries in the semis in 2008 and then in the grand final in 2009, or announcing the winner even before all the countries have awarded their points, starting this tradition in Malmö 2013. However, this is the biggest overhaul of the points since the 12-1 system was introduced in Stockholm in 1975.

We will have two parts in the voting section. The first one comes with each country revealing their jury points from 1-8, 10 and 12 (the points from 1-10 will automatically be displayed on the screen with the International spokesperson from each country, only announcing the 12 points in order to be faster) and then, the second part is all about the televoting and will be presented by the hosts. The televoting points from all participating countries will be combined, providing one score for each song. These televoting results will then be announced by the host, starting with the country receiving the fewest points from the public and ending with the country that received the highest number of points, just like Melodifestivalen (the Swedish national selection).

The new voting system guarantees that the winning country will break Alexander Rybak’s record from 2009, when he won with 387 points.  Another thing is that it will be less likely that a country will earn ”nul points”. A big disadvantage will be that the new system will again lean heavily back in favour of big diaspora block votes, which was why the jury was reintroduced.

Aside from the diaspora voting there are other issues. What will happen with countries that cannot deliver a valid televoting result, due to small populace or technical issues? EBU exlained that in that case (San Marino for example), a substitute result is calculated by the audience result of a pre-selected group of countries. These groups and their composition have been pre-approved by the EBU and the Reference Group. That process is still unclear even after EBU’s explanation.  We await to see the outcome of this exception

Let’s see now, how the scoreboard would have been if the new voting system has been used last year.

First the jury points:

1	Sweden	361
2	Latvia	249
3	Russia	248
4	Australia	224
5	Belgium	187
6	Italy	185
7	Norway	163
8	Israel	80
9	Cyprus	63
10	Georgia	62
11	Estonia	57
12	Slovenia	54
13	Montenegro	49
14	Azerbaijan	45
15	Austria	40
16	Serbia	36
17	Lithuania	31
18	Greece	30
19	Hungary	29
20	Germany	24
21	France	24
22	Romania	21
23	Albania	20
24	Armenia	18
25	United Kingdom	12
26	Spain	6
27	Poland	2

As Montenegrin jury’s points used the average of the points the country gave in the last competitions (12 Serbia, 10 Slovenia, 8 Russia, 7 Italy, 6 Albania, 5 Azerbaijan, 4 Sweden, 3 Israel, 2 Estonia, 1 Greece)

For FYR Macedonia jury’s points also used the average of the points the country gave in the last competitions (12 Serbia, 10 Albania, 8 Slovenia, 7 Italy, 6 Russia, 5 Montenegro, 4 Sweden, 3 Armenia, 2 Estonia, 1 Belgium)

Both of the countries used only the televoting in their result, as EBU didn’t aproove their juries’s results.

The televoting results:

1	Italy	368
2	Russia	293
3	Sweden	278
4	Belgium	193
5	Estonia	144
6	Australia	129
7	Israel	106
8	Albania	103
9	Serbia	94
10	Latvia	88
11	Armenia	77
12	Romania	71
13	Georgia	51
14	Azerbaijan	48
15	Poland	47
16	Lithuania	44
17	Norway	37
18	Montenegro	35
19	Slovenia	27
20	Spain	26
21	Greece	24
22	Hungary	17
23	Cyprus	8
24	German	5
25	United Kingdom	4
26	France	3
27	Austria	0

As EBU announced for San Marino we used the average points of Italy, Switzerland, Slovenia, Austria and Malta televoting, that gave 12 for Italy, 10 for Albania, 8 for Serbia, 7 for Russia, 6 for Sweden. 5 for for Australia, 4 for Israel, 3 for Belgium, 2 for Romania and 1 for Montenegro.

So after adding the two seperate results, the final results would be like that:

1	Sweden	639
2	Italy	553
3	Russia	541
4	Belgium	380
5	Australia	353
6	Latvia	337
7	Estonia	201
8	Norway	200
9	Israel	186
10	Serbia	130
11	Albania	123
12	Georgia	113
13	Armenia	95
14	Azerbaijan	93
15	Romania	92
16	Montenegro	84
17	Slovenia	81
18	Lithuania	75
19	Cyprus	71
20	Greece	54
21	Poland	49
22	Hungary	46
23	Austria	40
24	Spain	37
25	Germany	29
26	France	27
27	United Kingdom	16

As you can see the only difference in the top 10 would have Italy and Russia’s places. Italy would have been second and Russia third. However there are many changes in the rest of the scoreboard. Albania would have been 6 places higher with the new system, taking advantage of its big diaspora and the high points Albania got in televoting. The same with Armenia which would have been 3 places higher. Montenegro and Lithuania would have lost 3 places, while Germany and Austria would avoid 0 points and the last place, as United Kingdom would be last with that voting system.

(The article does not take into account that Malta would have qualified for the final instead of Azerbaijan, but this would have been the case).

The new system is intended to increase suspense in the voting procedure, we have to wait however until May to see how this will work.

What do you think of it? We asked that question on Twitter:

EBU announced change in reading of points – what do you think?

— EuroVisionary (@EuroVisionary) February 18, 2016

Below you can watch the video of SVT explaining the new rules:

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