Shame. Croatia was better, fight me. Also Israel apparently got 300 points, which sounds shonky as hell. That plus the Netherlands fiasco has made it an entertainingly dramatic competition this year.
Shame. Croatia was better, fight me. Also Israel apparently got 300 points, which sounds shonky as hell. That plus the Netherlands fiasco has made it an entertainingly dramatic competition this year.
There was an article in the Irish press which explained how this made sense, despite seeming unusual; it was particularly unusual in Ireland, which is heavily pro-Palestine in public sentiment,...
Exemplary
Also Israel apparently got 300 points, which sounds shonky as hell.
There was an article in the Irish press which explained how this made sense, despite seeming unusual; it was particularly unusual in Ireland, which is heavily pro-Palestine in public sentiment, yet gave Israel ten points. In summary:
Points are awarded based on the ordering of vote numbers, not on voting share, and there were 25 entries that could receive votes: a song could get 12 points with the support of as little as 4% of the votes.
A relatively small percentage of people vote, even amongst people watching - they have a statistic that it might be around 6% of viewers.
A person could submit up to 20 votes for a country if they were sufficiently motivated and willing to pay for them, and even if they were to vote multiple times, many people who are not so highly motivated to support one country will often divide votes amongst their multiple favourites.
As such, receiving a high public vote score could easily happen with even a very small number of highly motivated voters.
In an extreme case, considering 6% of viewers voting, votes being spread almost evenly, and voters for all but one country voting once each, while voters for that country vote 20 times, a song could get 12 points in the public vote from a country with the heavy support of only a bit more than 0.012% of the viewers there.
So, it's not surprising that entries being supported by motivated political groups, even if they are small, do very well on public vote points.
Also the anti-israel vote was divided. Croatia (for the flag similarity to the Dutch team's flag after their competitor was banned), Ireland (for real world political stances), France (for pointed...
Also the anti-israel vote was divided. Croatia (for the flag similarity to the Dutch team's flag after their competitor was banned), Ireland (for real world political stances), France (for pointed comments about peace in rehearsals and at the end of the performance)
I'm not saying it's the only or even the primary reason people voted for them but "settle for croatia" was a big thing on social media after Joost's ban. The point is not that Croatia was impacted...
I'm not saying it's the only or even the primary reason people voted for them but "settle for croatia" was a big thing on social media after Joost's ban.
The point is not that Croatia was impacted heavily by anti-Israeli voters. The point was that if your vote is entirely politically motivated pro-Israel, there's a very obvious course of action to vote for Israel. If your vote is entirely politically motivated anti-Israel, there are at least 3 options that were widely discussed on social media.
I preferred Croatia's song, but I think both would have been worthy winners. I thought Israel's song was bland and boring, but I read an explanation that a bloc of people voting for one entry is...
I preferred Croatia's song, but I think both would have been worthy winners. I thought Israel's song was bland and boring, but I read an explanation that a bloc of people voting for one entry is much more powerful than a whole bunch of people voting "against", which I put in quotation marks because there is no "against", only "vote for somebody else", which mechanically diffuses the votes.
That's almost certainly the case, to an extreme, as there are 25 entries. It appears that in most cases, proper numbers are not available, but that in some countries there may be a legal...
That's almost certainly the case, to an extreme, as there are 25 entries.
It appears that in most cases, proper numbers are not available, but that in some countries there may be a legal requirement to release less processed results. There's the suggestion that Italy may be one of those, and in a quick search I did find 2022 percentages. While the political pro-Ukraine vote was substantial, it was still only 30%, in a year when Ukraine had over 400 points in the public vote. The rest were all below 15%, so, for example, Moldova got 10 points with 13% of the vote.
That's what I was trying to communicate, just not very succinctly! I'm sure the full story will come out at some point, if only because Eurovision is a source of drama and its fans can be quite...
That's what I was trying to communicate, just not very succinctly! I'm sure the full story will come out at some point, if only because Eurovision is a source of drama and its fans can be quite dogged.
I was surprised to see the UK receive 0 points in the public vote. I didn't think it was a bad song, or a bad performance, but the offical YouTube video for it has (from what I can see with my...
I was surprised to see the UK receive 0 points in the public vote. I didn't think it was a bad song, or a bad performance, but the offical YouTube video for it has (from what I can see with my chrome extension) almost 1:1 like to dislike ratio. Was it political (e.g. Brexit?, Olly Alexander's approach to Palestine?), was it homophobia (explicitly gay), or was it puritanism (explicitly sexy).
I'm inclined to think a mix of politics and homophobia, although mostly politics. Discourse around why the UK has been scoring so badly in the past few years has often focused on the idea that "the UK doesn't take it seriously", and "never sends real celebrities/good singers". This year we did, and although we got a few points from the Jury (which should be removed anyway imo), I don't think the song deserved 0 points from the public vote.
In regards to why Israel got so many, as others have raised, it's easier to vote for something than against something in Eurovision, but also, importantly, many of the people I know who usually watch Eurovision (myself included) decided to boycott this year. I don't know the official statistics or if that made a dent at all in the viewing/voting figures, but it would explain why so many countries voted Israel +10 or more, if large numbers if people who would normally vote anything but Israel were instead not voting at all.
Gay (and all other queer people) watch Eurovision in huge concentrations. I am sure you know that queer people were winning Eurovision for many many years now. So I think it's completely baseless...
Gay (and all other queer people) watch Eurovision in huge concentrations. I am sure you know that queer people were winning Eurovision for many many years now. So I think it's completely baseless to say that it's due to homophobia. It was just a song that people didn't enjoy. Speaking for me as a gay guy (again -- this is just me, n=1, and music is fully subjective), it was a bad song.
It's not necessarily that nobody enjoyed it, they may have just enjoyed it less than other performances that it was competing against. I thought it was good, but it wouldn't have gotten my vote by...
It's not necessarily that nobody enjoyed it, they may have just enjoyed it less than other performances that it was competing against. I thought it was good, but it wouldn't have gotten my vote by a long shot if I were casting one.
In particular, the public vote in each country gives no points to the bottom 60% of songs, in other words, the majority of them. A song that consistently gets around the median vote share in each...
In particular, the public vote in each country gives no points to the bottom 60% of songs, in other words, the majority of them. A song that consistently gets around the median vote share in each country won't get any votes at all.
As such, if the object is to avoid getting 0 points in the public vote, the worst performance to have is one that is broadly seen as okay but middling, especially when people can vote many times depending on how motivated they are. Having a more divisive performance is actually better.
Normally I wouldn't reply to a comment like this, I've made my opinion clear and you've made yours clear. I'm happy to let you have yours and me have mine. In my experience, replying past this...
Normally I wouldn't reply to a comment like this, I've made my opinion clear and you've made yours clear. I'm happy to let you have yours and me have mine. In my experience, replying past this point often risks conversations just going into pointless arguments. However, in this particular case, I feel it's important for me to make a further argument.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be saying (I'm paraphrasing here), 'Its baseless to say Olly Alexander received no points in the Eurovision public vote because of homophobia (to any degree) because many people who watch Eurovision are queer.'
I don't follow this for several reasons. Firstly, although I agree that many Eurovision fans are queer, it doesn't mean they all are. Indeed, it's clear there was a homophobic response to the song. Precisely the scale of this homophobia is unclear, but it certainly isn't hard to find it, suggesting that it is at least fairly rife.
Secondly, homophobia/queerphobia isn't a monolith. Queerphobia to different groups manifests itself in different ways. For better or worse (probably worse), female homosexuality has been been better tolerated in the public eye in the west. In the early 2000s, lesbians were unusual, but sexy, often depicted so for the male gaze. Gay men and gay sex specifically were depicted as undesirable and gross. Neither is good, I'm not arguing that one is better than the other, I'm just making a point that they're different. Eurovision is a gay event, and queer people have often done well at it (this year there were two non-binary people in the top 6), but how the audience reacts to different kinds of queerness does differ. It seems to me from my very anecdotal life experience, that graphic gay sexuality is still on the more unacceptable side of queer expression.
As a continuation on this thought, even if the entire audience of Eurovision were queer, I'd still expect homophobia to be a part of the event, even if small. Much like being a person of colour doesn't magically stop you from being racist, being queer doesn't stop you from being homophobic. Unfortunately, homophobia is so entrenched in our society that many queer people hold onto some of the homophobic teachings of our cultures. These are engrained within us from a young age and can be difficult to identify, nevermind root out. That's not to mention the intergroup queerphobia that can sometimes persist. As a bisexial non-binary person, I have faced two different kinds of queerphobia from queer people. Being LGBT doesn't make you immune from holding negative opinions on LGBT people.
In fact, it's possible that Eurovision being gay (and homophobia existing) could be part of the reason the UK got no votes. In a competition largely seen as Queer by a queer audience, most people won't vote for a gay act because it's gay - the whole thing is gay to some degree. Homophobes on the other hand, are more motivated not to vote for an explicitly gay act, but they may be much more comfortable voting for a person who happens to be queer even if their act was not.
My original assertion, and one that I still maintain, is that Olly Alexander received no points in the public vote largely because of Eurovision politics, but also at least in part because his act was explicitly gay. I don't believe it is baseless at all to suggest that homophobia played a part, however small, in how people voted. The other comments in this thread suggest that the song simply was unpopular, and although I don't agree, I'll take note that I seem to be outnumbered here. It's not something we'll ever know, so arguing about it is fairly pointless, but I made this argument anyway because it sat badly with me to suggest that homophobia isn't a part of how the public votes, simply because homophobia is very real and alive in the west.
Whether you think the song is bad or not is entirely subjective. I liked the song - I'm sorry you didn't. What isn't subjective is the fact (no quotation marks) that Olly Alexander faced a huge...
Whether you think the song is bad or not is entirely subjective. I liked the song - I'm sorry you didn't.
What isn't subjective is the fact (no quotation marks) that Olly Alexander faced a huge amount of homophobic backlash for the song he performed. Just search his name on twitter and many of the top results are homophobic to some degree.
Ah okay. That's obviously horribly and shouldn't happen - but sadly not surprising for twitter. I was simply referring to the song compared to the other songs and the countless people I spoke with...
Ah okay. That's obviously horribly and shouldn't happen - but sadly not surprising for twitter. I was simply referring to the song compared to the other songs and the countless people I spoke with afterwards that felt the same. It just felt bland and uninteresting and like it tried to make up for the lack of song quality in provocative show antics.
I think the song had potential, but his voice just wasn't the best. He doesn't quite hit the note in the first few seconds of the song - starting a little flat like that is super noticeable. I...
I think the song had potential, but his voice just wasn't the best. He doesn't quite hit the note in the first few seconds of the song - starting a little flat like that is super noticeable. I like some of his past work, but he didn't do a great song. Good for him for getting there though. That's still an achievement. A better performance (song and "show", for my taste) won in the end.
One of my favourite entries in years. Wonderfully sung, musically diverse, and performed with a terrifically impressive level of genuine enthusiasm and energy. Very happy for them!
One of my favourite entries in years. Wonderfully sung, musically diverse, and performed with a terrifically impressive level of genuine enthusiasm and energy. Very happy for them!
The detailed results are interesting with the public and jury votes varying substantially. The top 5 performances for each group are as follows: Combined Votes (Jury+Public) Switzerland's Nemo...
The detailed results are interesting with the public and jury votes varying substantially. The top 5 performances for each group are as follows:
Combined Votes (Jury+Public)
Switzerland's Nemo (591)
Croatia's Baby Lasagna (547)
Ukraine's Teresa & Maria (453)
France's Slimane (445)
Israel's Eden Golan (375)
Jury Votes
Switzerland's Nemo (365)
France's Slimane (218)
Croatia's Baby Lasagna (210)
Italy's La noia (164)
Ukraine's Teresa & Maria (146)
Public Votes
Croatia's Baby Lasagna (337)
Israel's Eden Golan (323)
Ukraine's Teresa & Maria (307)
France's Slimane (227)
Switzerland's Nemo (226)
I was curious to see if the Jury and Public disagreed with each other so much in previous years or if this year was for political reasons on either party. Take a look at the data for 2023, 2022 and 2021 and you'll see that the general public and the jury always vote completely differently. It looks despite having half the voting power the jury usually fail to crown the winner with this year the exception.
I wouldn't say that the jury and public disagreed that much here, really. 4 of the top 5 songs were the same for both, so there was some broad consensus about which were the best entries.
I wouldn't say that the jury and public disagreed that much here, really. 4 of the top 5 songs were the same for both, so there was some broad consensus about which were the best entries.
Shame. Croatia was better, fight me. Also Israel apparently got 300 points, which sounds shonky as hell. That plus the Netherlands fiasco has made it an entertainingly dramatic competition this year.
There was an article in the Irish press which explained how this made sense, despite seeming unusual; it was particularly unusual in Ireland, which is heavily pro-Palestine in public sentiment, yet gave Israel ten points. In summary:
As such, receiving a high public vote score could easily happen with even a very small number of highly motivated voters.
In an extreme case, considering 6% of viewers voting, votes being spread almost evenly, and voters for all but one country voting once each, while voters for that country vote 20 times, a song could get 12 points in the public vote from a country with the heavy support of only a bit more than 0.012% of the viewers there.
So, it's not surprising that entries being supported by motivated political groups, even if they are small, do very well on public vote points.
Also the anti-israel vote was divided. Croatia (for the flag similarity to the Dutch team's flag after their competitor was banned), Ireland (for real world political stances), France (for pointed comments about peace in rehearsals and at the end of the performance)
Wait, Croatia's entry was awesome, if people voted for them it wasn't because of the flag's similarity to the Netherlands.
I'm not saying it's the only or even the primary reason people voted for them but "settle for croatia" was a big thing on social media after Joost's ban.
The point is not that Croatia was impacted heavily by anti-Israeli voters. The point was that if your vote is entirely politically motivated pro-Israel, there's a very obvious course of action to vote for Israel. If your vote is entirely politically motivated anti-Israel, there are at least 3 options that were widely discussed on social media.
I see what you're saying.
I don't think the drama is over yet. This fiasco must have some consequences for certain people in charge.
I preferred Croatia's song, but I think both would have been worthy winners. I thought Israel's song was bland and boring, but I read an explanation that a bloc of people voting for one entry is much more powerful than a whole bunch of people voting "against", which I put in quotation marks because there is no "against", only "vote for somebody else", which mechanically diffuses the votes.
That's almost certainly the case, to an extreme, as there are 25 entries.
It appears that in most cases, proper numbers are not available, but that in some countries there may be a legal requirement to release less processed results. There's the suggestion that Italy may be one of those, and in a quick search I did find 2022 percentages. While the political pro-Ukraine vote was substantial, it was still only 30%, in a year when Ukraine had over 400 points in the public vote. The rest were all below 15%, so, for example, Moldova got 10 points with 13% of the vote.
eurovisonworld.com has all the numbers you could ever want about Eurovision.
That's what I was trying to communicate, just not very succinctly! I'm sure the full story will come out at some point, if only because Eurovision is a source of drama and its fans can be quite dogged.
I was surprised to see the UK receive 0 points in the public vote. I didn't think it was a bad song, or a bad performance, but the offical YouTube video for it has (from what I can see with my chrome extension) almost 1:1 like to dislike ratio. Was it political (e.g. Brexit?, Olly Alexander's approach to Palestine?), was it homophobia (explicitly gay), or was it puritanism (explicitly sexy).
I'm inclined to think a mix of politics and homophobia, although mostly politics. Discourse around why the UK has been scoring so badly in the past few years has often focused on the idea that "the UK doesn't take it seriously", and "never sends real celebrities/good singers". This year we did, and although we got a few points from the Jury (which should be removed anyway imo), I don't think the song deserved 0 points from the public vote.
In regards to why Israel got so many, as others have raised, it's easier to vote for something than against something in Eurovision, but also, importantly, many of the people I know who usually watch Eurovision (myself included) decided to boycott this year. I don't know the official statistics or if that made a dent at all in the viewing/voting figures, but it would explain why so many countries voted Israel +10 or more, if large numbers if people who would normally vote anything but Israel were instead not voting at all.
Gay (and all other queer people) watch Eurovision in huge concentrations. I am sure you know that queer people were winning Eurovision for many many years now. So I think it's completely baseless to say that it's due to homophobia. It was just a song that people didn't enjoy. Speaking for me as a gay guy (again -- this is just me, n=1, and music is fully subjective), it was a bad song.
It's not necessarily that nobody enjoyed it, they may have just enjoyed it less than other performances that it was competing against. I thought it was good, but it wouldn't have gotten my vote by a long shot if I were casting one.
In particular, the public vote in each country gives no points to the bottom 60% of songs, in other words, the majority of them. A song that consistently gets around the median vote share in each country won't get any votes at all.
As such, if the object is to avoid getting 0 points in the public vote, the worst performance to have is one that is broadly seen as okay but middling, especially when people can vote many times depending on how motivated they are. Having a more divisive performance is actually better.
Normally I wouldn't reply to a comment like this, I've made my opinion clear and you've made yours clear. I'm happy to let you have yours and me have mine. In my experience, replying past this point often risks conversations just going into pointless arguments. However, in this particular case, I feel it's important for me to make a further argument.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be saying (I'm paraphrasing here), 'Its baseless to say Olly Alexander received no points in the Eurovision public vote because of homophobia (to any degree) because many people who watch Eurovision are queer.'
I don't follow this for several reasons. Firstly, although I agree that many Eurovision fans are queer, it doesn't mean they all are. Indeed, it's clear there was a homophobic response to the song. Precisely the scale of this homophobia is unclear, but it certainly isn't hard to find it, suggesting that it is at least fairly rife.
Secondly, homophobia/queerphobia isn't a monolith. Queerphobia to different groups manifests itself in different ways. For better or worse (probably worse), female homosexuality has been been better tolerated in the public eye in the west. In the early 2000s, lesbians were unusual, but sexy, often depicted so for the male gaze. Gay men and gay sex specifically were depicted as undesirable and gross. Neither is good, I'm not arguing that one is better than the other, I'm just making a point that they're different. Eurovision is a gay event, and queer people have often done well at it (this year there were two non-binary people in the top 6), but how the audience reacts to different kinds of queerness does differ. It seems to me from my very anecdotal life experience, that graphic gay sexuality is still on the more unacceptable side of queer expression.
As a continuation on this thought, even if the entire audience of Eurovision were queer, I'd still expect homophobia to be a part of the event, even if small. Much like being a person of colour doesn't magically stop you from being racist, being queer doesn't stop you from being homophobic. Unfortunately, homophobia is so entrenched in our society that many queer people hold onto some of the homophobic teachings of our cultures. These are engrained within us from a young age and can be difficult to identify, nevermind root out. That's not to mention the intergroup queerphobia that can sometimes persist. As a bisexial non-binary person, I have faced two different kinds of queerphobia from queer people. Being LGBT doesn't make you immune from holding negative opinions on LGBT people.
In fact, it's possible that Eurovision being gay (and homophobia existing) could be part of the reason the UK got no votes. In a competition largely seen as Queer by a queer audience, most people won't vote for a gay act because it's gay - the whole thing is gay to some degree. Homophobes on the other hand, are more motivated not to vote for an explicitly gay act, but they may be much more comfortable voting for a person who happens to be queer even if their act was not.
My original assertion, and one that I still maintain, is that Olly Alexander received no points in the public vote largely because of Eurovision politics, but also at least in part because his act was explicitly gay. I don't believe it is baseless at all to suggest that homophobia played a part, however small, in how people voted. The other comments in this thread suggest that the song simply was unpopular, and although I don't agree, I'll take note that I seem to be outnumbered here. It's not something we'll ever know, so arguing about it is fairly pointless, but I made this argument anyway because it sat badly with me to suggest that homophobia isn't a part of how the public votes, simply because homophobia is very real and alive in the west.
Thanks - I couldn't put into words what you just said.
I don’t think you need to drag homophobia or politics into the “fact” that it was a bad song and weak compared to almost all the other entries.
Whether you think the song is bad or not is entirely subjective. I liked the song - I'm sorry you didn't.
What isn't subjective is the fact (no quotation marks) that Olly Alexander faced a huge amount of homophobic backlash for the song he performed. Just search his name on twitter and many of the top results are homophobic to some degree.
Ah okay. That's obviously horribly and shouldn't happen - but sadly not surprising for twitter. I was simply referring to the song compared to the other songs and the countless people I spoke with afterwards that felt the same. It just felt bland and uninteresting and like it tried to make up for the lack of song quality in provocative show antics.
I think the song had potential, but his voice just wasn't the best. He doesn't quite hit the note in the first few seconds of the song - starting a little flat like that is super noticeable. I like some of his past work, but he didn't do a great song. Good for him for getting there though. That's still an achievement. A better performance (song and "show", for my taste) won in the end.
Nemo - The Code (LIVE) | Switzerland🇨🇭| Grand Final | Eurovision 2024
One of my favourite entries in years. Wonderfully sung, musically diverse, and performed with a terrifically impressive level of genuine enthusiasm and energy. Very happy for them!
Norway beating its own record: Now last in the Eurovision final a record 12 times!
I'm happy my favourite won, but Norway got robbed. :-(
The detailed results are interesting with the public and jury votes varying substantially. The top 5 performances for each group are as follows:
Combined Votes (Jury+Public)
Jury Votes
Public Votes
I was curious to see if the Jury and Public disagreed with each other so much in previous years or if this year was for political reasons on either party. Take a look at the data for 2023, 2022 and 2021 and you'll see that the general public and the jury always vote completely differently. It looks despite having half the voting power the jury usually fail to crown the winner with this year the exception.
I wouldn't say that the jury and public disagreed that much here, really. 4 of the top 5 songs were the same for both, so there was some broad consensus about which were the best entries.