The dust, or maybe cork?, has not settled yet but no matter who wins tomorrow night, we are heading to a very tight race and not many people have realised that yet.
The market definitely hasn't, otherwise the odds for the quartet leading the odds, would have been closer to each other.
My analysis will try to shed some light regarding how countries are performing when voting for the Jury vote.
I have collected their Top-3 marks and tried to locate the ones that are more accurate at rewarding the high scores to the Winners and Top-3 finishers.
I will focus on the Jury voting only because it could be proved useful during the voting tomorrow night.
Before start digging in the numbers, I need to highlight that there are many fallacies and stereotypes out there regarding how the countries vote and my findings prove that. Countries tend to give their 12s in a vast array of countries and not always follow the neighbour/ally approach. Of course there are a few countries that still do that and vote locally but not in the extent you could expect them to.
I will give you a classic example to demonstrate my point Greece and Cyprus have given their Jury 12s to 5 different countries each in that 8 year span! And yes, sometimes one of them was not in the Final but I bet that if I had asked the question in a poll, people would reply 2 or 3 in best case scenario.
Let's dive!
The 8/8 (7/7) Jury Club
This is the list of countries that have awarded their set of 12 Jury points in 8 or 7 different countries, voting for a different country anytime! The exclusive members of this club are:
8/8 Austria, Georgia, Italy, Norway, Serbia, Sweden
7/7 Portugal, Ukraine
All these countries are awarding their 12 in a different country every year!
The 'We like diversity 7/8 for our Jury Winner' Club
7/8 Australia, Belgium, Iceland, Israel, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, San Marino, Spain, Switzerland
This is the most popular group of all and the two groups combined together make up for the 19/37 countries competing. Juries like diversity!
The 'We might have a special friend' (75%Club)
6/8 Albania, Azerbaijan, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Moldova, Slovenia, UK, Armenia (5/7)
And this is where some of the usual suspects start to show up, but we are still talking about 5 or 6 different countries selected for the set of 12.
30/37 countries have awarder their set of 12 points at least in 6 different countries for the Jury vote.
The 'Look, we have a special someone and don't want to cheat on them' Club
5/8 Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Greece, Montenegro (3/5)
Greece and Cyprus yes but there is a worse couple you did not expect to see down there...
The 'We are taken' or the 'We are the Sweden's groupies' Club
4/8 Estonia
3/8 Finland
You mentioned diversity so far, but what about accuracy?
And this part of my analysis could be used as a guide for when the voting is happening to check for some signs. There isn't a country that hands their Jury 12pts consistently to the Jury Winner.
In fact there are only 8 countries that have a 50% or slightly better record on accuracy and the champions on this list will surprise you.
This is where the biased/friends/allies factors kick in and makes the results a bit more predictable, with countries voting for different countries but these countries usually are neighbours or allies and Surprise, surprise the Public vote has a better percent of accuracy when awarding their 12 points!
Let's check who are the best performers in handing their set of 12s to the Jury Winner.
The 50+% Club
5/8 Albania, Lithuania
4/7 Austria, UK
4/8 Estonia, Israel, Netherlands
3/6 Switzerland
There is no point of adding the mid of the table predictors, but there is a point of adding the list of countries that fail to award the top mark to the Jury Winner.
The 'I have no idea what my Jury is doing' Club
0/8 Australia!!!
0/5 Montenegro
1/8 Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Norway, San Marino
1/7 Armenia
1/6 Portugal
Australia, a country that has been heavily backed by Juries throughout the years to achieve great or good results, has failed to the day to award the Jury Winner their 12 points!
Things are getting better when instead of checking for the sets of 12 points for the Jury Winner, we check for Top-3 rankings. The percentage of accuracy there is way better and this is the list I will have in mind during the voting. Checking particular countries' Top-3 jury ranks to identify Jury contenders.
This is the list where you want to see Sweden, Austria, France and Netherlands performing and will be the indicator/decisive factor of their performance
Including the Jury Winner in our Top-3 result every year aka the 'We know our Job' Club
7/7 Austria and UK
The only countries that have included the Jury winner in their Top-3 every time! I bet you did not expect UK to be up there! It will be interesting to see if Austria will vote tactically, now that is among the favourites.
The 'We are consistent at including the Jury Winner in our Top-3' Club
7/8 Belgium, Denmark, Lithuania
This little group here is the one I am looking forward the most to check how they will vote. I have my spreadsheet ready already.
6/8 Albania, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Israel, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Spain
5/7 Sweden, Ukraine
The 'Who cares about objective criteria? We know better' Club
0/5 Montenegro
The only country that has not yet included the Jury Winner in their Top-3 results! If a country is in that list, is doomed!
1/8 Greece
Awarding Cyprus year after year is one thing, failing to include the Jury Winner in your Top-3 is another! And Greece is very consistent there as well. The only country that makes that Top-3 and is not doomed is Albania!
2/8 Australia, France
We talked about Australia already, and now it is France's turn! France has regularly been a contender in for the Jury win and has consistently voted strategically by blanking or marking down the other contenders. Portugal, Greece or Luxembourg taking France's Jury 12 incoming...
I do have a feeling that tomorrow night we will be watching the most interesting Jury voting for some time and I expect a very tight race for the overall winner. But more about that in tomorrow's post...
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