So Sweden have overtaken Luxembourg, the UK and France to become the outright second most successful country in Eurovision history, and the way things have been going in recent years, there must be a very good chance that they'll eventually overhaul Ireland to become the most successful. Ever since I first saw Heroes at Melodifestivalen, I've been wondering what percentage of its popularity can be put down to the ingenuity of the staging. If you strip all that away, would the song have defeated Russia tonight on its own merits? The result probably would have been closer, although the flip-side of that argument is that Russia only got as close as they did with the help of the usual neighbourly voting. (Sweden benefitted from that as well, of course, but the Nordic bloc vote is much smaller.)
This year's contest wasn't one of the harder ones to predict, but allow me to blow my own trumpet anyway - my prediction was pretty close to the nail. I was spot-on about the winner, the runner-up and 5th place. I was just one place out with Italy, who finished third rather than fourth. My only real error was Serbia. I've gone from one extreme to the other with them - I massively underestimated them in the semi-final, but significantly overestimated them tonight.
Apologies to anyone who took my semi-advice about the 8/1 bet on Montenegro finishing in the top ten, but hopefully you can see what I meant about it being a value bet. They finished 13th out of 27 entries, so self-evidently they had a much better than one-in-nine chance of making the top ten (which is what the odds implied). Actually, their biggest piece of misfortune was that Croatia no longer participate in the contest - that made the Balkan bloc vote smaller, and arguably cost Montenegro the chance to finish as high as 11th.
I bristled when Graham Norton said that Montenegro had done "much better than it deserved". The complete reverse is true - in the absence of Ireland, it was my own personal favourite. But for some reason, UK commentators seem to have long-standing "issues" with Balkan songs penned by Željko Joksimović - you might remember Terry Wogan's bewilderment when Lane Moje came within a whisker of winning in 2004.
Even though the bookies favoured Belgium, I'm still slightly baffled by the success of Rhythm Inside. I have a feeling that may have been down to the juries more than the voting public, because it was a somewhat 'challenging' entry, to say the least.
By my reckoning, the contest finished at two minutes to midnight, which is surely the latest finish ever - it was 12.58am in central Europe, and 1.58am in Russia and Finland. The EBU have really got to get that sorted - it would have been so easy to trim down some of the preliminaries at the start of the show, or of course they could have read the riot act to the national spokespeople, and told them to dispense with all the "thankyou for a wonderful show" malarkey. But I'm not complaining - I think this year's Eurovision will go down as something of a classic, and it was so nice to have genuine tension and uncertainty in the voting, rather than the procession for one country that we've been used to in recent years.
Pop!
ReplyDeleteHoss! Hiss! Hoss!
DeleteI awoke this morning to my FB timeline full of random Eurovision comments. Nothing useful, like who won it! I almost went to the BBC just to satisfy my curiousity. Instead I thought I'd try here first! Job done. Still don't get it, but now I know who won it and who are first and second most successful countries!
ReplyDeleteOut of interest, if Scotland had got independence in September (obviously not due to start for two years). How do you think we would have faired from other countries voting? If we had a relatively good song.
ReplyDeleteI think we'd be in the same boat as Ireland are these days - we wouldn't be getting any special favours in the voting, but we wouldn't be as unpopular as the UK.
DeleteI actually liked Belgium's entry. It was my personal favourite of the night. The way the crowd was getting at the end, I suspect Russia didn't win because it was Russia rather than the Swedish song being superior (Even with the interesting staging).
ReplyDeleteThere is a YouGov poll in the Sunday Post today.
ReplyDeleteSNP are picking up on its finding about EU referendum voting intentions.
http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2015/may/snp-welcome-eu-poll
The paper's political editor is also talking about Scottish independence VI.
I wonder if the Kellner Correction is still being used. :-)
DeleteIt did seem a rather long programme. It was finished in the early 1960's days by 10 pm and when there were more contestants by 11 pm. I didn't care for the winner and hoped that the Russian or the Montenegro entries would win. It has become more about staging than the actual songs. Pity that the live Orchestra did not play for the entries.
ReplyDeleteQuestion from a relatively recent addition to the world of political anoraks:
ReplyDeleteWhat was the polling picture like pre-indyref? I don't mean in the couple of years before the referendum (I'm all too aware of that), but what it was like roughly a decade ago (Or longer). I've heard that there have been independence polls in the past that have seen Yes/No margins similar to what we have today. Any sources if possible? I'm eager to know what the long term picture is.
Apart from around the time of the devo introduction 1997-1999 when Yes was quite comfortably out in front, on average, No has always been ahead by a decent margin of ~10 points or so before DK is excluded.
DeleteFrom about 3 months out from the iref until now, so coming on a year, we've reach a new persistent narrowing where No seems to still have it, but only within MoE.
I suspect it is the age demographic thing. The Sunday Post are saying their new poll only has the over 60's backing the union. This is pretty much consistently the picture across all polls; support for the union is slowing passing away into history.
Also, I might add that older polling data we must take care with. At that time, the question was asked without any real debate over the consequences.
DeleteSo, really we want to look from 2011 on when the subject became very really.
Obviously, No built up a big lead in this period, hitting nearly 65% against (ex DK). This then fell from 2013 onwards to voting day when it was 55%. Since then, that narrowing patter seems to have continued to be maybe 52% now ex DK.
Demographically, the union has maybe 5 years before there is a natural majority for Yes barring any political developments that swing things.