Posted May 19, 200817 yr The maths of Eurovision voting By Ruth Alexander BBC Radio 4, More or Less Britain's Eurovision hopes will no doubt be dashed as bloc voting sweeps a Balkan or Baltic act to victory on Saturday. What patterns do mathematicians spot in the voting? Eurovision has long been known as a festival of political skulduggery. Claims that Sir Cliff Richard was robbed of first place in 1968 because of General Franco's scheming is just the latest story in a long history of grumbling about questionable voting practices. So much so that allegations of vote-rigging have become the subject of intensive academic inquiry. Sociologists, engineers, mathematicians and even a molecular geneticist have been trying to determine whether suspicions of neighbourly back-scratching are well-founded. In last year's contest, when the UK came second - from bottom - even commentator Terry Wogan's sense of humour failed him. "Over the last few years, the scoring has undoubtedly become ridiculous," he spluttered. "The voting is so influenced by Baltic groups, and Russian groups, it's become unfunny really." Serbia was the Eurovision 2007 winner - a result predicted by Dr Derek Gatherer, a scientist who's been studying the song contest for the past five years. "I decided that if I can write computer programmes to study patterns in biological sequence data, then presumably I can also write something that will study patterns in Eurovision," he says. Dr Gatherer uses a computer to generate thousands of random simulations of Eurovision song contest results, using data on all the votes cast since 1975. These simulations are then compared with the real results. Any unusual voting patterns can be spotted. "What comes out of this analysis is that there are essentially three large voting blocs within the contest. One of them is centred around the Balkan countries and the former Yugoslavia," he says. "The second one is slightly to the east and is centred on Russia and the Ukraine, and includes countries like Belarus and Poland, Georgia and Moldova. And then there's one further north which is around Scandinavia. As well as the Scandinavian countries, it consists of the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania." Derek Gatherer's statistical analysis also shows several smaller trading partnerships, including the UK and Ireland. So Wogan's right. There's obviously something suspicious going on. Actually, that's not necessarily true. Another academic has been looking at some possible innocent explanations. Dr Michel Vellekoop specialises in mathematical finance at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, and ponders the statistical significance of Eurovision voting in his spare time. "It may be that some countries will give many points to songs which are in the same language, or in a language which is similar," he says. "Or it may be that there are certain cultural characteristics, which makes a song more interesting to other countries." Together with a colleague Dr Laura Spierdijk, he has taken a closer look at how individual countries have voted between 1975 and 2003. After correcting for language, cultural and religious preferences, they found strong evidence of political voting only among Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Other voting patterns, Dr Vellekoop says, can largely be explained by language preferences and shared cultural tastes. Cyprus and Greece, for example, are commonly accused of favouring each other and of all the countries, statistics suggest they are the most likely to vote for each other. Wogan seemed to sum it up when Cyprus awarded Greece 12 points in last year's contest. "Over the years people say this is ludicrous, this is ridiculous," he laughed. "But still they do it. They just don't care." But Dr Vellekopp says his statistical analysis shows the reason the two countries give high marks to each other so often is because their people speak the same language and probably like the same kind of music. Dr Gatherer also dismisses the idea of straightforward and widespread political bias. But neither can cultural preferences be the key, as voting blocs have grown so rapidly in recent years. "In the 1980s, there were only two or three countries that were involved in observable vote trading partnerships. But from the 1990s onwards it increased dramatically. In 1993, there were six countries involved. In 1998, there were 12 countries, and now we have 31 countries involved." "People observe it happening when they watch the contest and then they're motivated to go out and do it themselves in subsequent years. So it seems to be some kind of social epidemic that's spread through Europe and has infected almost everybody." A Eurovirus. Whether you're in the camp of the conspiracy or the cultural theorists, the statistics explore in detail what the naked eye can already see - voting patterns. Based on his analysis, Dr Gatherer will make a prediction for this year's winning entry after the semi-finals later this week. But he says the likely winners and losers are already clear. "There are seven countries which are not involved in any kind of vote trading at all: Malta, Monaco, France, Israel, Switzerland, Portugal and Germany. They're at a serious disadvantage and are quite unlikely to win the contest, whereas countries at the centre of the larger blocs - like Serbia, Russia, Sweden and Iceland - have a much higher chance." So what hope for the UK's Andy Abraham with his catchy song Even If? "We simply won't get a lot of countries voting for us on the basis of bloc voting patterns," Dr Gatherer says. "So although I obviously wish the British entry the best of luck, I think we're labouring under a very difficult handicap." What's your opinion on this? Do voting patterns guarantee only Balkan/Baltic winners from now on or do they only provide an advantage? I'm very inclined to agree with Dr Vellekopp - hence a good result for Israel in 2005, which would apparently be ruled out going from the trends. I do feel that cultural bias gives a distinct advantage but in itself isn't enough to win a contest. And Dr Gatherer clearly doesn't know what he's talking about if he's ruling out Portugal and even MENTIONING Monaco! :rofl: And just LOL at Even If being referred to as a 'catchy song' :mellow: The article itself did surprise me in that it wasn't written in an 'everybody hates us' tone, which I have normally come to expect from the BBC ^_^
May 19, 200817 yr I don't think that ONLY Baltic/Balkan are only to win from now on. This is an absolute c**p. Don't lose the hope and stop sending $h!t songs like FTF and EI :kink: :kink: Edited May 19, 200817 yr by Pavel
May 19, 200817 yr Interesting read... I agree with much of it, but I dunno. Part of me wants to think that if a country sends a good enough song it will win, but then I'm also now wondering say, had Portugal sent 'Molitva' last year, would it have won? I don't think it would. Serbia must've had guaranteed 12s from Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania and whoever else, and Portugal would have got six at most from these countries, due to the top four or five nearly always being occupied by neighbours. The Cyprus/Greece/Turkey thing IS political - no doubt about it - but I don't think us not getting anything has any political stuff in it tbh. Most of it is neighbourly voting, which is caused by a combination of Bosnians living in Croatia or whatever and cultural similarities. Finland are only part of a very small voting block really - Sweden, Estonia and maybe Latvia and Denmark - but then still won with a huge percentage in 2006. I think if Portugal don't qualify this year, then this neighbourly voting shebang is harming the contest, as if Serbia were being represented by Vania Fernandes, they'd probably be 5/1 to win - as they already are with Jelena. As it is, you can find odds for Portugal at 100/1.
May 19, 200817 yr Of course there is a small degree of truth, but on the main it is rubbish. The simple reason the UK & most of Western Europe has done poorly in the last few years is that we have by a large sent rubbish/novelty songs by unknown/joke/has-been acts, when most countries East of Berlin take the competition seriously and send bona fide popular acts from their countries. For example, if we sent a good song performed by the likes of a Melanie C, Katie Melua or the Sugababes then we would be looking at a Top 10 finish, no question, instead of sending a TV talent competition runner up with a song that sounds like a Hot Chocalate B-side from 1978 which deserves a bottom six finish.
May 19, 200817 yr Author Europe would LOVE Mel C, no question :cheer: We REALLY need to start doing things the Swedish way -_-...
May 19, 200817 yr political voting obviously has a huge effect on the contest and is a good reason that Croatia and Macedonia would never get nul points should they progress to the final...all of the countries that have come last in this decade are as follows 2000: Belgium 2001: Norway 2002: Denmark 2003: UK 2004: Norway 2005: Germany 2006: Malta 2007: Ireland note how most of these countries have few friends...of course most of these 8 songs were either poor or performed out of tune but I wouldn't expect to see an Eastern European country come last in the final, no matter how dire the performance was because they will always pick up at least 8s from their neighbours
May 19, 200817 yr political voting obviously has a huge effect on the contest and is a good reason that Croatia and Macedonia would never get nul points should they progress to the final...all of the countries that have come last in this decade are as follows 2000: Belgium 2001: Norway 2002: Denmark 2003: UK 2004: Norway 2005: Germany 2006: Malta 2007: Ireland note how most of these countries have few friends...of course most of these 8 songs were either poor or performed out of tune but I wouldn't expect to see an Eastern European country come last in the final, no matter how dire the performance was because they will always pick up at least 8s from their neighbours Aye... Macedonia 2000 springs to mind on the out of tune note! :lol:
May 19, 200817 yr thank god for Macedonia that Croatia and Romania had gone deaf that evening and awarded 10s to them then :kink:
May 19, 200817 yr the Macedonian entries always catch me off guard like bad crimes :kink: I start being indifferent to them and then end up loving them...I even now like the English version of Let Me Love You...I had it in my head all day at work today :lol:
May 19, 200817 yr Karolina's 2002 entry is another one that sometimes randomly pops up in my head when I'm at work...damn Macedonian Eurovision entries :rofl:
May 19, 200817 yr I'm liking the 2008 entry now actually. ^_^ The CD version is pretty good. Possible qualification, I'm not sure. 2002 was alright, 2004 and 2005 were awful, 2006 was very good and 2007 was very good also, and rather classy by Eurovision standards. 1998 was one of the worst on the night though I felt.
May 19, 200817 yr I don't think only balkan songs will win in future. As long as western countrys stop complaining about block voting and actually send good songs we still have a chance. As long as we stay true to our countrys musical background while at the same time being modern about it, we can do well. ^_^
May 20, 200817 yr On the contrary, I do think that east countries will be the winners from now on. I see the future of ESC like that: West countries will withdraw one after another in about 3-4 years time. The contest will still exist and will still be big, but it'll be centered around East Europe and most probably financed by Russia. That's it, if in 1960s and 1970s it was entirely a West Europe contest, now it's going the East way.
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