RESULTS REVIEW | Facts and figures from the perplexing point-y end of Portugal’s first ESC

By Jaz, May 13, 2018

Well, Eurovision 2018 is over (NOOOOOOOO!!!) and we have a winner (obviously…what an anticlimax it would be if we didn’t). In case you somehow missed the entire voting sequence and haven’t been online since Italy’s final note, that winner was Israel. Netta’s Toy did what the odds had suggested she would do up until Cyprus’ Fuego overtook it last week – but she clucked her way into first place anyway, and you can’t say we don’t have the most original and unique Eurovision winner in a long while on our hands.

I’ll talk more about what I think of Israel’s win, my favourite performances and much more (and I’ll be holding the annual EBJ Awards for Eurovision Excellence) later on. The first order of business though, now that the show is done and dusted, is to check out the results. I’ve taken a look at the overall and split results from both semi finals and the grand final and pulled out some of the most interesting *she hopes* facts and figures, successes and fails and other observations for your reading pleasure *she hopes some more*.

Let me know what caught your eye, shocked you and made you cry tears of joy (or sadness…Eurovision is an emotional time) where the 2018 scoreboard is concerned in the comments!

 

 

SEMI FINAL 1  

Image credit: escxtra.com (because I couldn’t be bothered making my own when this brilliant one was already in existence).

 

THE OVERALL RESULTS

Israel won a semi final for the first time with Netta. Also qualifying more successfully than ever before were Cyprus (previous best 5^th) and the Czech Republic (previous best 9^th).

That second-ever qualification for the Czech Republic’s came far more comfortably than their first. In 2016, they slipped through in 9^th, but Mikolas managed to fall only behind the two big bookies’ favourites, Israel and Cyprus – even without doing a backflip.

Ireland’s 6^th place in the semi equals their highest qualification, achieved by Jedward 2.0 in 2012.

It was Finland who just snuck in to the top 10, out-scoring Azerbaijan by 14 points. A qualification is a qualification (and you deserved it, Saara!) but 10th is the lowest position Finland has qualified in.

In terms of my predictions (as seen on Instagram), I correctly predicted that the Czech Republic would qualify 3^rd, Estonia 5^th and Bulgaria 7^th. Happy accidents happen, guys!

 

THE SPLIT RESULTS

Like in 2016 but unlike 2017, the televoters and jurors did NOT rank the same country first. Portugal won both votes last year, but Cyprus steamrolled the televote this year, finishing only 6^th with the juries. Israel, on the other hand, won the jury vote but finished 4^th with televoters – below Cyprus, the Czech Republic and Estonia (all of whom Netta obviously beat in the final).

The biggest differences between the televote and jury vote in the first semi concerned Finland (7^th T/15^th J), Greece (10^th T/16^th J) and Belgium (16^th T/9^th J).

Greece would have qualified under a 100% televote; Belgium and Switzerland deserved to be in the final according to the juries.

The only countries to be ranked in the same positions by both voting groups were Azerbaijan, Armenia, Macedonia and Iceland in 12^th, 14^th, 18^th and 19^th respectively. No agreeing to disagree there!

 

 

SEMI FINAL 2

Image credit: escxtra.com (again…I hope they don’t mind/notice).

 

THE OVERALL RESULTS

Alexander Rybak may not have won Eurovision again, but he is now the first person to win a semi final twice. That’s how you kick some butt! Maybe he’ll come back in another nine years and win a third SF?

The countries that qualified better than ever before this time were…well, none of them. All of this semi’s qualifiers have made it through in a higher position in the past (apart from Norway, of course).

Sweden has now qualified in the top three songs of the last six semis they’ve participated in. Of those six, five finishes – including Benjamin’s – were in the top two.

Denmark sailed into the final (pun intended) in the top five for the first time since 2013. There’s magic in them there beards, I tell ya!

As it turns out, it was Hungary who was lucky to make the final from SF2, beating out Romania by just 4 points.

I (miraculously) predicted that Norway would win this semi, Sweden would come 2^nd and Moldova would come 3^rd. I also thought Ukraine would finish 4^th, which they did in the televote. Does that count? Am I psychic yet?

 

THE SPLIT RESULTS

Again, two different countries took the fancy of the televoters and juries – in this case, Denmark won the televote (!) and Sweden won the jury vote. Can you score points like a Scandinvian, ALL NIGHT LONG?!?!? Denmark ranked only 12^th with the juries though, while Sweden dropped to 6^th with televoters (not my fault – Benjamin got more than half of my 20 votes).

The most drastic differences between the televote and jury vote on Thursday night were with Denmark (as I just mentioned, 1^st T/12^th J), Hungary (5^th T/13^th J), the Netherlands (12^th T/4^th J), Latvia (15^th T/6^th J) and Malta (18^th T/5^th J).

Poland would have qualified under a 100% televote; Malta, Latvia and Romania, meanwhile, would have made it to Saturday if the juries had all the power.

Both parties were on the same wavelength with Slovenia, Montenegro and San Marino, whom they ranked 9^th, 14^th and 16^th respectively.

 

 

THE FINAL   

Image credit: escxtra.com (ICYMI).

 

THE OVERALL RESULTS

Winner Israel netted 529 points in total, with 42 countries able to give them points – a little less than Ukraine’s 534 (with 41 countries available) from 2016, and a LOT less than Portugal’s 758 (with 41 countries available also). 2018’s competition was clearly more open than the two that preceded it.

Toy is Israel’s 4^th winning song and first since 1998. They also won in 1978, so I guess we know who’ll be crowned champion in 2038.

Cyprus’ strut straight into 2^nd place makes for their best result, having competed (mostly on, not so much off) since 1981 and only reached the heights of 5^th in the BE era (Before Eleni). I have to say it: YEAH YEAH FIRE!

Four years after their epic win with Conchita Wurst, Austria pulled a bit of a (tall) dark (and handsome) horse move by finishing in 3^rd. This marks the first bronze medal ranking for Austria in their ESC history. Hail Cesár indeed.

Germany surprised many of us (i.e. me) with a stunning 4^th-place finish. This comes after an über-awful run of results that left them languishing in 21^st, 18^th, 27^th, 26^th and 25^th from 2013-2017. Could they be the new Belgium?

Italy’s (again, surprising) top five finish adds a 6^th top 10 finish to the collection they’ve amassed since their 2011 comeback. Power to the message song!

As expected – once Mikolas Josef got out of hospital – the Czech Republic outdid any contest outcome they’ve had before by a million miles. Qualifying once in 2016 and finishing last in the final was their personal best until Saturday night. A substantial televote allowed them to leapfrog into 6^th place, no lie (HA HA HA), and I feel strangely like a proud mother despite having no Czech ancestry whatsoever.

Sweden found themselves in the top 10 for the fifth year running, though not in their usual style (I’ll get back to that). Estonia, meanwhile, made it after DNQs in 2016 and 2017. Moldova dropped to 10^th from last year’s 3^rd, but since that’s two top 10 results on the trot (Hey Mamma being their first song to hit those heights since 2007), I don’t think DoReDos will be unhappy with that.

Albania’s commendable 11^th place came mostly via the jurors who clearly rewarded Eugent’s INCREDIBLE vocals. I’m fine with that – the man is a powerhouse, and I’m proud of Albania for qualifying and then grabbing a really decent spot after all was said and done.

Alexander Rybak must have come back to the ESC with the intention of winning again, but that was always going to be the toughest of tasks. What ultimately happened was that Norway became the first country to win a semi final, then finish outside of the top 10 in the final. Hey, at least it’s another milestone for Rybak…just not the kind he was hoping for.

I can’t not be a little devastated for Australia and my girl Jess Mauboy, after we ended the evening with our worst result ever. But we still qualified comfortably, and Jess did an amazing job in the final (that I think deserved a better deal, but I’m biased). She left nothing in the tank, and the crowd LOVED it.

We’re all aware of the Eurovision Curse of Number Two, but Saara Aalto’s personal curse of a similar nature struck again in Lisbon – only this time, she wasn’t just behind the winner, but just ahead of last-placed Portugal. Ouch. I’d predicted Finland to wind up mid-table, so that’s a bit of a shocker. But maybe they threw a bit too much at the staging and people didn’t know where to look (a problem shared with Malta).

 

THE SPLIT RESULTS  

We had a clear televoting winner and a nose-ahead jury winner this year. Eventual all-around champ Israel snatched the public vote preference from Cyprus by a 64-point margin, finishing third with the juries; and Austria (the most pleasant surprise of the night) pipped Sweden by 18 points with the professionals…despite ending up with the 13^th-highest televote.

Sadly for our hosts Portugal, the one thing televoters and jurors agreed on during the final was that O Jardim should be ranked last. I’m not quite sure how the heck that happened – I thought Claúdia was mesmerising, and not just because her hair had reached new and extreme levels of pinkness. Whatever went wrong, Portugal can now join the unfortunate club of countries who have dropped as far down the scoreboard as possible from one contest to the next (but if it helps, at least they weren’t slapped with a big fat zero á la Austria 2015).

Inconsistencies between the televote and jury vote were all over the place in the final, and in a big way. The most notable differences, from least OMG to most OMG were re: Austria (13^th T/1^st J), Australia (26^th T/12^th J), Italy (3^rd T/17^th J), Denmark (5^th T, 20^th J), Ukraine (7^th T/26^th J), and Sweden (23^rd T/2^nd J). Australia’s televote bomb and Sweden’s whopping difference of 21 places between televote ranking and jury ranking were the revelations that had my jaw on the floor. I have no explanation for those, and I am NOT AMUSED.

 

 

Which scores and split results caught you by surprise, and which ones were exactly what you were expecting? Let me know below!

 

 

 

 

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