Politics and all that aside, what was everyone’s grower of the contest?

Mines was definitely Iceland. Never thought much of it before the contest but absolutely loved it on the stage. Gutted the juries screwed them

10 minutes ago, uhsting said:

Are the people who wanted to vote for the Israeli song but do not want to because of the country in the room with us right now? 🤔

Precisely - it’s just a generic Eurovision ballad. The kind of thing that had it been sent by say Montenegro or Albania or whoever else would have been in the bottom of the semi. Even being objective about it, it’s just not a compelling song, the jury vote also reflects that really.

Aside - it’s kind of sad that the televoting and jury alike have both been subject to controversy the past few years. It felt like such a good balance and now both metrics have glaring problems and can often feel unsatisfying no matter what the result is.

Wow, I wasn't much of a fan of the UK entry's song but to give the girls credit they sounded great. 0 points was grossly undeserved, honestly what the hell? Same for Switzerland?

Israel almost winning made me feel a bit sick, why were they even allowed to enter honest to god?

Also, I find it disturbing that some people see "don't watch it then" as a solution. I refuse to stop following the wonderful pop culture event that's been a part of my life for 30 years just because EBU don't have the balls to do the right thing.

That said, I am pretty sure that the far right's interest towards voting for Israel will diminish each year passing by, my interest towards the contest won't.

Oh We’re back to the someone that doesn’t have the same opinion as me is far right?

This is part of the reason why so many people will vote for Israel.

I liked the Israeli song and voted for it. I am anything but far right.

5 minutes ago, Sour Candy said:

Also, I find it disturbing that some people see "don't watch it then" as a solution. I refuse to stop following the wonderful pop culture event that's been a part of my life for 30 years just because EBU don't have the balls to do the right thing.

That said, I am pretty sure that the far right's interest towards voting for Israel will diminish each year passing by, my interest towards the contest won't.

Absolutely, and for me the other thing is that’s letting them, that’s giving them even more chance to win with less of us voting. And it doesn’t achieve anything, actually calling things out, speaking out, protesting, donating, that’s what actually helps. But a lot of these people don’t see that, even from our side of the coin they have a moral high horse of “just boycott Eurovision” but don’t do anything constructive themselves.

As defeated as I feel, they didn’t win and I don’t want to give up fighting for what’s right just because it’s harder or things don’t always go our way.

4 minutes ago, eurovision4ever said:

Oh We’re back to the someone that doesn’t have the same opinion as me is far right?

This is part of the reason why so many people will vote for Israel.

I liked the Israeli song and voted for it. I am anything but far right.

No if you disagree with my love for passion fruit then that does not make you far right but there is obviously a context here.

Some people just don't care about politics, or do care about politics but don't want it in Eurovision. Those two groups are probably the backbone of the entire contest. But if you are encouraged to vote for a country because you don't like that people are upset about the genocide that said country is carrying out then that is a political reaction.

It's perfectly plausible that the song itself has legitimate fans (I loved Israel's 2021 entry! Unfortunately I wouldn't be able to vote for it today for explicitly political motivations), but other posts have explained why this doesn't explain its high score.

Just now, eurovision4ever said:

Oh We’re back to the someone that doesn’t have the same opinion as me is far right?

This is part of the reason why so many people will vote for Israel.

I liked the Israeli song and voted for it. I am anything but far right.

No, but it's pretty clear where the campaign to vote for it comes from.

41 minutes ago, eurovision4ever said:

Oh We’re back to the someone that doesn’t have the same opinion as me is far right?

This is part of the reason why so many people will vote for Israel.

I liked the Israeli song and voted for it. I am anything but far right.

“I’ll show them how not far-right I am by siding with the far-right!” teas.

The reason people vote for a genocidal country is just to spite the annoying woke with their liberal pro-Arab agenda? Without context this is a deeply childish and nationalist act and does its job in helping the far-right get ignorant low-key racist people from the fence further to their right.

Having lived in Germany for a while now, I ‘get’ them and their decades-long guilt brainwashed into the population from birth but the rest of Europe being so nonchalant and cruelly silent about the whole thing is insane. :(

If you were to genuinely end this gimmick. Realistically only 5-6 countries have a chance of winning any given year. If you had an anti-Israel voting bloc that basically spread votes out on a mass scale between those 6 and knocked Israel from 12 to 6 points eventually the voting Israel gimmick to ‘own the libs’ would get old and there would be no need to do it. Could still spoil the competition a bit but probably the only way to guarantee it becomes an irrelevance. If you start having people a lot of other people out there don’t like shouting about how Israel shouldn’t be there it just encourages those to get involved to ‘trigger’ people even if they don’t actually really care too much about Israel. And that’s probably what’s happening now. So just pay them no mind and be as organised as they are in the opposite direction and in 2-3 years the gimmick is dead without them having won any public votes in the meantime. If instead people loudly protest in the deluded belief they can convince organisers to kick Israel out it’ll just play into their victim complex and gain the casual ragebaiters attention

I don’t know about “far right” which is becoming a very overused phrase. However it very much is people sabotaging a song contest that they probably have at best a passing interest in by voting for non musical reasons. I’m not a fan of the loud booing either because to me that’s also non musical sabotage to an extent. On TV it won’t be heard so it’s only the fans around you who mostly agree with your position to an extent anyway being disrupted.

People in particular social media bubbles will share “vote for Israel” posts. Because people feel an emotional connection to whatever group they’re in and like to cement their sense of belonging they jump on the bandwagon. I don’t think there’s any great malice behind it for the most part but it’s very sad as fans to see obvious non musical voting taking over to such an extent. For decades people have incessantly said “Eurovision is political”. And the ironic thing is that it never has been really. The neighbourly voting has always been mostly cultural. This is by far the most political thing that’s happened as long as I’ve been watching.

And because voting figures are probably quite low in the semifinals you see the impact most there. In semi 2 Israel had:

13 12s

3 10s

And an 8, a 7 and a 2 (not sure how Romania escaped the pile on).

In the final it isn’t quite so overwhelming as much more people are voting in good faith. But still when there are 26 options they can only average 4% of the votes each, so it probably only needs 20% or so for one country to cause a landslide 12.

Yeah it’s sad.

26 minutes ago, Liam Sota said:

If you were to genuinely end this gimmick. Realistically only 5-6 countries have a chance of winning any given year. If you had an anti-Israel voting bloc that basically spread votes out on a mass scale between those 6 and knocked Israel from 12 to 6 points eventually the voting Israel gimmick to ‘own the libs’ would get old and there would be no need to do it. Could still spoil the competition a bit but probably the only way to guarantee it becomes an irrelevance. If you start having people a lot of other people out there don’t like shouting about how Israel shouldn’t be there it just encourages those to get involved to ‘trigger’ people even if they don’t actually really care too much about Israel. And that’s probably what’s happening now. So just pay them no mind and be as organised as they are in the opposite direction and in 2-3 years the gimmick is dead without them having won any public votes in the meantime. If instead people loudly protest in the deluded belief they can convince organisers to kick Israel out it’ll just play into their victim complex and gain the casual ragebaiters attention

If it gets to the point that mass vote rigging the points on the other side is the only solution why have a contest? Even considering that such organisation is never going to work or be enough to outplay the Israeli concentration - even by your own theory that anti-Israel action draws attention to the issue (something far from corroborated) it doesn't work. Leaning on the organisers is the most likely method of keeping the contest intact for the long term - we're having all this discussion with it coming 2nd, imagine what we would be facing with an Israeli winner and likely hosting next year, stripping of hosting rights and bad feelings on all sides at the very least.

I suspect that should an Israel-Gaza ceasefire come about and things settle back into an uneasy status quo it might be less of a pressing issue, but there will still likely be pressure from the Israel government on KAN to send similar vacuous peace ballads to repair its reputation and the Israel campaigns will continue to try and launder their reputation, something that likely isn't going to go ignored for several years yet.

In terms of the stats, I’m living for 3rd, 12th and 21st positions matching their running order, being equidistant and also alphabetically sorted by country name.

12 songs in total finished within 2 positions of their running order spot :’)

14 minutes ago, Iz 🌟 said:

If it gets to the point that mass vote rigging the points on the other side is the only solution why have a contest? Even considering that such organisation is never going to work or be enough to outplay the Israeli concentration - even by your own theory that anti-Israel action draws attention to the issue (something far from corroborated) it doesn't work. Leaning on the organisers is the most likely method of keeping the contest intact for the long term - we're having all this discussion with it coming 2nd, imagine what we would be facing with an Israeli winner and likely hosting next year, stripping of hosting rights and bad feelings on all sides at the very least.

I suspect that should an Israel-Gaza ceasefire come about and things settle back into an uneasy status quo it might be less of a pressing issue, but there will still likely be pressure from the Israel government on KAN to send similar vacuous peace ballads to repair its reputation and the Israel campaigns will continue to try and launder their reputation, something that likely isn't going to go ignored for several years yet.

They banned Russia due totrhe influence of the state on their delegation. An excuse, but whatever. Israel is doing the exact same thing. They can easily ban it using that rule.

23 hours ago, gooddelta said:

Agreed roughly with Liam's order, and that it looks like going one of four ways.

Contenders:

1. France - likely to storm the jury and I guess could get 200 televotes with where it is in the draw

2. Sweden - still quite likely to win the televote, is going to to need to keep up the pace with juries with 150 at the bare minimum

3. Finland - has been the dark horse in the way of it looked like she was coming lower half of the top ten for ages but actually pulled a winner's performance vibe out of the bag. If the jury don't undermark her then she has an outside shot

4. Austria - Maybe a bit too divisive to win and an early draw won't help but if it's 'the chosen one' for the jury and they give it 350 then it could still win, I suspect they might look to France more than this

   Outsiders:

5. Netherlands - could well come top five in both votes so could end up being a consensus winner

6. Albania - likely to be the winner of Southern Europe and the Balkans who literally have nothing else local to vote for apart from Greece, would love to see this push for top five but not sure it's going to get loads of Western televote support

7. Israel - Never count them and their supporters out, sadly

8. Switzerland - I expect Louane will take the French ballad televotes and this (imo better song) will find itself with about 40 televotes and a very high jury score. In the mix for top five due to juries, but not the win.

9. Estonia - terrible draw could harm its public vote a bit and juries won't love it, but it could be top three in the televote

Would be fairly surprised if any of these miss the top ten. The other top 10 spot could be any of about 5 or 6 countries honestly.

France - 7th (-6)

Sweden - 4th (-2)

Finland - 11th (-8)

Austria - 1st (+3)

Netherlands - 12th (-7)

Albania - 8th (-2)

Israel - 2nd (+5)

Switzerland - 10th (-2)

Estonia - 3rd (+6)

Pretty hopeless prediction from me overall, with France and Netherlands being the most overpredicted (seems the jury weren't as predictable as expected, it's been several years since I've been that far out with a predicted winner), as well as Finland (I don't know what happened with the public vote there), and Israel and Estonia the most underpredicted.

At least these nine did all make the top 12 so no huge howlers but Finland really had the full package to do far better. Greece, Ukraine and Italy were the others in the top ten and I did at least win a bet on Italy being top ten so that wasn't a huge shock. The other two did make sense too, a great performance from the former with a lot of the southern and Eastern votes going to it deservedly, and Ukraine's diaspora/support boost helped them plus the song did stand alone musically so I get it.

Edited May 18May 18 by gooddelta

4 hours ago, eurovision4ever said:

Politics and all that aside, what was everyone’s grower of the contest?

Mines was definitely Iceland. Never thought much of it before the contest but absolutely loved it on the stage. Gutted the juries screwed them

LATVIA. AMAZING!!!!!

Very interesting video, highlighting the EBU's double standards:

I feel like all we have to do to fix the public is make it so that each person can only vote once and/or make it so that you have to vote for 10 songs in Eurovision style (12-10-8-7-...). That would make it much harder to spam vote for just one contestant as you have to vote for 9 others too.

34 minutes ago, diva thin muffin said:

I feel like all we have to do to fix the public is make it so that each person can only vote once and/or make it so that you have to vote for 10 songs in Eurovision style (12-10-8-7-...). That would make it much harder to spam vote for just one contestant as you have to vote for 9 others too.

Only way to do 12 10 8 7 would be via the app

I think that - while sounds good in theory - would be open to manipulation. I could see Israel supporters just taking the bottom nine from the odds to put in their vote alongside Israel, which obviously would make the result even weirder not to mention completely unrepresentative.