Netta from Israel wins 2018 Eurovision Song Contest

We have a winner! After an intense voting, where the jury voting started with six different 12 point’s, finally Netta was crowned the winner of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest. Next year, we’ll all be heading to Israel. 

The past few weeks, odds really changed a lot. Journalists and fans saw it as a very open contest where anything could happen, and bookmakers were equally confused with odds changing a lot. As there were no clear winner, but more like a shortlist of five to maybe ten potential winners, tonight’s voting became extra nerve-wracking.

The result

01	Ukraine	MELOVIN	Under The Ladder	130	17
02	Spain	Amaia y Alfred	Tu Canción	61	23
03	Slovenia	Lea Sirk	Hvala, ne!	64	22
04	Lithuania	Ieva Zasimauskaitė	When We’re Old	181	12
05	Austria	Cesár Sampson	Nobody But You	342	3
06	Estonia	Elina Nechayeva	La Forza	245	8
07	Norway	Alexander Rybak	That’s How You Write A Song	144	15
08	Portugal	Cláudia Pascoal	O Jardim	39	26
09	United Kingdom	SuRie	Storm	48	24
10	Serbia	Sanja Ilić & Balkanika	Nova Deca	113	19
11	Germany	Michael Schulte	You Let Me Walk Alone	340	4
12	Albania	Eugent Bushpepa	Mall	184	11
13	France	Madame Monsieur	Mercy	173	13
14	Czech Republic	Mikolas Josef	Lie To Me	281	6
15	Denmark	Rasmussen	Higher Ground	226	9
16	Australia	Jessica Mauboy	We Got Love	99	20
17	Finland	Saara Aalto	Monsters	46	25
18	Bulgaria	EQUINOX	Bones	166	14
19	Moldova	DoReDoS	My Lucky Day	209	10
20	Sweden	Benjamin Ingrosso	Dance You Off	274	7
21	Hungary	AWS	Viszlát Nyár	93	21
22	Israel	Netta	TOY	529	1
23	The Netherlands	Waylon	Outlaw In ‘Em	121	18
24	Ireland	Ryan O’Shaughnessy	Together	136	16
25	Cyprus	Eleni Foureira	Fuego	436	2
26	Italy	Ermal Meta e Fabrizio Moro	Non Mi Avete Fatto Niente	308	5

Before the live broadcast began, Israel and Cyprus were the hot favourites, and they did end up in first and second place. However, they were not favorites with the 43 juries. Before the televote was revealed, they were placed only  3^rd and 5^th.

A closer look at the votes reveals that there was a great difference between the votes from the juries and the televote. The juries had Austria first and Sweden second, but both Dance You Off and Nobody But You did’t get many votes from the public. Austria maintained a place in top 3, but Sweden was only 7^th when the televote was added. Sweden was number 23 with the public with only 21 points, while Austria got 71 points (13^th place) from the public.