Is the jury really so overwhelming?

You have been banned from r/croatia and r/Finland

There are three constants in life:

1. Death

2. Taxes

3. Eurovision fans inventing whole new fields of mathematics to come up with a scoring system in which the song they preferred would have won

Which is to say, yes I agree that people should be calmer. But I also don't take the anti-jury comments particularly seriously. Much of it seems to be just people blowing off steam, as people do

Big agree. Even in years when the televote winner wins I sometimes see complaints about the jury having too much power after the final oddly enough, HOWEVER if this 2 year trend becomes a 3 year trend then in that case I'll probably lean towards the conclusion that removing juries from semifinals means televotes get split amongst way more songs than the jury points do in the final as jury bait stays in the semi easier. But especially this year, most stereotypical jury bait got through, so I'm not of that opinion yet.

I think Eurovision voting system is based on San Remo Festival voting system, and I've always heard my compatriots complaining about it since I was born - and believe me they're way angrier and louder than eurovision fans 😂 It's the little things in life that you can be sure about, like death and taxes, and they're just part of the contest experience, enjoy it 😁

My problem is less that the jury winner won and more that in the last two years they've created an insane lead. Historically the jury votes were more spread out which usually made the winner lean televote which I think is generally a happier ending. I wonder if Martin changed the jury voting method and that's why it's been more concentrated on the top?

I think the problem is the televote only semifinals. That results in more televote friendly acts being sent, but once they get through to the finals the televote is split between multiple acts, while the jury goes for the 1 or 2 acts that are more catered towards them. When the semifinals were also 50 50, the juries had more options and got more split out between them.

I also don’t like when people complain about televoting being pointless with jury. It’s not. Both Nemo and Loreen got a lot of points from televote. They wouldn’t have won without it. The televote was still very important. I think no matter what the result and voting system is there still will be people complaining. When 2 years ago Ukraine won the televote and the contest, some people were also complaining about it. I think the real solution is to just relax and enjoy the music. Eurovision is not only about winning. For me discovering new artists is the main purpose of it.

Personally I think both the jury and televote are flawed, but they seem to balance one another out by and large. That said, ensuring a broad and diverse jury would prevent the jury vote becoming an overwhelming landslide behind a single song. For example ensuring members from different genres of music, or who represent different areas like choreography and stage design or music composition rather than just members focused on the vocal and lyrics. Perhaps a larger jury for each country might help too.

Keep in mind that we have to pay for the televote, while juries get paid for their time. It's always going to cause some unhappiness when you get to the results and half way through it's already clear that someone has won the jury vote so overwhelmingly, that the televote doesn't really matter at all. So people end up feeling ripped off as they are paying for this and it feels pointless. I think the last two years a jury winner winning would be a lot more acceptable if they hadn't won with 150 points difference from the second place in the jury.

The issue with the jury system is also the main design of the jury system.

They're all looking for the same thing. So if one country think it's the best, then other countries are also likely to think the same, because again they're looking for the same thing.

In years like 2021 it works as intended, you have 5 countries who are all roughly even and the jury votes show that. Making the televotes the main factor.

In years like 2023/24, you have one jury standout and the flaw in the design is shown and it makes the televote seem pointless.

Personally I think they should just combine the jury and televotes together, average them out and use that as the ranking system.

In the end, winner must do well in both votings to win. This is the best system we have had and I would like not to remove either juries or televotes, even though both votings have their issues.

my favorite song wins because of jury: thank god for the jury, these philistine masses cant recognize the greatness
my favorite song wins because of public: thank god for the public, jury is just being pretentious

It's not just about jury vs public winner, it's about the point differences between the two as well. The juries just gave Sweden & Switzerland huge leads, and made them win with pretty big gaps to the televote winner - that's the issue. Nobody will mind if an act loses public by 10 points and then wins via jury - but the gaps these last 2 years have been pretty big.

Let's look at the last years, if jury or public #1 won, and what difference they lost the other vote with:

2024: Jury winner; 111 behind in tele

2023: Jury winner; 133 behind in tele

2022: Public winner; 91 behind in jury

2021: Public winner; 61 behind in jury

2019: neither

2018: public winner; 59 behind in jury

2017: both

2016: neither

2015: Jury winner; 87 behind in public

2014: both

2013: both

2012: both

2024 & 2023 simply have the strongest differences, especially compared to 2018 & 2021. That's the thing. For comparison, max tele score with 37 countries is 36 × 12 = 432, always getting 2nd is 360. So a difference of 72. I dunno, I think that makes 111 and 133 look like gaps the juries shouldn't be able to overrule.

And in the end, jury vs tele: yes, tele should be "worth" more. The audience is who the competition is for, they spend money to vote.

To point this out: I don't want to discredit Loreen or Nemo and their wins. Heck, Nemo is my fave winner since 2014, they're incredible. But I think this "trend" implies some re-thinking regarding the voting system might be neccessary (maybe like others mentioned, juries back in the semi, less than 20 votes per Person etc).

I think the way that the voting goes right now is perfectly fine. Maybe also have jury voting in the semi, is also fine.

But they should probably rethink the way they present the points. Nemo was so good (and a completely deserved winner) that there were so few countries that didnt vote for them. So every time the Swiss didnt get any points you could already see the 12 points coming. This just resulted in like half an hour of people screaming: Switzerland 12 points! Not that exciting and then after they just give the televotes in one big bundle of points.

Maybe the presenters can give the 12 points from the jury and the televote? That would give a bit more variety but then you dont get the super tense final moment.

Im not sure what the perfect way is but i dont think its this.

The problem is not a jury winner at the end, but the problem is an overwhelming jury winner - the voting is boring and extremely lopsided and it doesn't seem realistic that all those different jury members think in the same way.

For me the last two years I've agreed on the jury winner but not the margin

Thing is, we can't really do anything about it

I genuinely think Finland could have won in any other year and was impacted by the hype around a returning winner, which will hopefully be a very rare event.

I don’t feel the same about Croatia and actually feel like the jury saved the result in many ways this year. They even gave more points to Ireland and Armenia than the public did.

Genuine question here... Why does everyone say Turkey is the rightful winner of 2010? We won the televote AND the jury vote so we deserved to win. Even with a better jury score, Turkey wouldn't have won, so why the hell would they be the rightful winner?

What happened in the last two years is more the result of televote-only semis than some grand jury conspiracy. Ditching the jurys in the semis was probably the worst thing they could've done, as it tipped the balance heavily towards more jury-bait performances in the final. There's no reason to not bring back juries in the semis, as they're already part of the final score anyways.

I would put % of votes entries got from jury. We had 2 record breaking years in row

Wow, we haven't had an agreed winner since Salvador Sobral in 2017. I didn't realize it's been that long while it's been a fairly common occurence up until 2014 (apart from 2011 when the voting was all over the place anyways).

No. People get pissy when this sub doesn’t get to pick the winner. The last thing we need is more Eurovisions decided by who has a war on at the time.

Of course I'm a bit salty now, but I always prefered just televoting. This and the last year makes me not want to vote anymore when Jury gives so many points to 1 country that televoting makes no difference.

Also we would have a close race with 3 countries (4 if Netherlands wasn't disqualified) and I missed the time when the voting was so close, like 2003 where you are on the edge of the seat through the whole voting sequence.

The jury, for me, have preferences on music type, so the rocky numbers and silly fun stuff people enjoy don’t get what they deserve sometimes

It’s more of a overwhelming jury winner twice in a row rather than just a jury winner, but I agree with this post anyway

Just imagine Keiino winning 2019 instead of Duncan 💀

What gets lost at only looking at how many times the jury winner has won the competition is the reality that the jury and televote have drifted farther and farther apart in the last handful of years. As seen here, the last year that both the jury and televote had the same winner was 2017, seven competitions ago. Keep in mind we almost had Austria and North Macedonia win in 2018 and 2019 and countries qualifying with 0 points in the televote thanks to the jury. We’re long past the days where the jury and the televote agreed with each other on the winner. We also have proof from the past several years that jurors will vote politically to punish countries they dislike as well as taking bribes and colluding with other jurors.  

I also just think a lot of people dislike vote sweeps even if they have nothing against the winner. It’s boring giving all the attention to the jury points while the televote is rushed through in a way that makes it hard to keep track of how many votes each contestant gets.

I wouldn't say it's overwhelming so much as the voting isn't balanced because of the nature of who each group votes for. It's very unlikely that the televote will just crowd one act but with the semifinal changes of a few years ago, it's inevitable that the juries go for one act, maybe split between two at best.

If the jury votes are fine only when they either agree with the televote or don't change the results their point is null and void.

If we would have taken the jury votes from both Croatia and Switzerland neither of them would be the winner. The jury votes would also not be enough to give Sweden first place last year. So I think it makes it more exciting it's there. but I also never have televote winner and jury winner as my favourite. And I think both would deserve to win

Doesnt matter, not fun when the jury winner wins and not the number 1 the people voted.

I just don’t think there’s a need for the juries.

“It’s to prevent trolls from winning”

I can’t think of a single year the televote victory was unserious or a troll entry. Sure the televote awards a lot of points to trolls, but none of them win the televote. Even when it was 100% televote the victory was always awarded to someone who was serious and deserved it.

The jury was reintroduced after Lordi won. And I have heard a lot of people speculate that those were related. I have also heard people call Hard Rock Hallelujah a troll. Which it absolutely is not. Lordi are some of the most beloved winners of Eurovision, they have been brought back a bunch of times and people still to this day think highly of them. Any other winner that year would not be remembered as fondly.

“It’s to award singers and songwriters who have talent that the average viewer would not know to appreciate”

This would be a really good point…if it was true. Not only are most juries just stacked with music producers and pop stars that guess what would be popular on the radio, they actively punish anything outside of the box.

Norway had an amazing vocal performance, an impressive ode to Norse songs and was overall championed by actual music experts. The juries killed it.

In 2023 Portugal delivered an amazing performance that was set to be under appreciated by the audience. This was the time for the jury to swoop in and save it! The jury gave them 18th.

“They prevent block voting”

They should prevent block voting. But they don’t. Greece and Cyprus continue their little love story. The Nordics keep voting for each other even when they are doing phenomenally bad. And the Eastern European countries continue to give each other votes regardless of the performance.

Yes, the audience block votes too. But doubling the votes by letting a country block vote in the televote and jury vote makes the gap between the ones with friends and those without bigger, not smaller.

All in all, there’s no point to the juries anymore. Not unless we give each country stricter rules for the jurors.

I am not surprised at all it was clear that either Croatia or Switzerland would win. This year (and partly last year too) showed us that Jury no longer chooses the folk dance performances or fun shows but lgbt, artistic, individual, marginal performances are valued.

The question of overwhelmingness can only be answered percentually. Switzerland's jury lead over 2nd place is less than Loreen's last year (167% vs 192%), but it still being enough to win the contest despite being fifth in the televote (fifth!!) is really troubling.

Unfortunately I don't have the spreadsheet anymore, but I ran the calculations (how heavily jury- or teleleaning were the winners) and IIRC it was a worsening trend. The one outlier was Salvador Sobral, who destroyed the televote and jury vote equally so hard that he achieved a perfect 50%/50% vote split from the televote and jury and will probably statistically be the greatest damn winner ever.

My issue is when thousands of people, who spend real money to vote, are totally screwed over by a small group of juries. How does a country placed 1st in televotes lose to a country placed 5th? There was a 100+ points difference between 1st and 5th place in televotes! What's the point in viewers voting when a 100+ points difference isn't enough to crown the winner? Might as well only have juries then.

I think there are two main issues with the jury.

The jury consist of a small group of people who are supposed to be experts and judge the performances objectively. This means that every jury should be voting more or less the same, otherwise they are not really doing their job.

That leads to the second problem which is the scoring system. Televotes are more likely to be more evenly distributed which makes it more difficult to close a big gap from the jury votes. The points are also not linear with the number of votes you get. Most voted song could get 10 million votes and 12 points while second most with 100k votes would only get 2 points less.

In 2023, Käärijä was 190 points behind Loreen after the jury votes. He got the second highest points from televotes ever (376) which is on average 10.16 points from each country. Loreen had to get 186 points from televotes which is around 5 points per country on average to win. For Käärijä to catch up with the gap Loreen had from the jury votes, he had to rely on that 4-5 different countries would outperform her in the televotes which obviously did not happen.

I think televoting only semi-finals will make televoting results come through less in the finals, and that the jury has more saying now. Doesn’t mean that Nemo doesn’t deserve the win, they absolutely do, but it’s something to be looked at, because it happened in both years that this system has already been active in……

You need the juries to counter the televotes which are nothing to do with the songs themselves - e.g. Ukraine in 2022 inflated televotes due to the Russian invasion. You will always have "emotional" voting from the public while the juries will vote based on their interpretations of the songs, which will still show differences as different countries have different opinions on what they like. Personally I would prefer to return to just jury votes due to this but EBU will never get rid of the cash cow that is televoting (they don't keep it because they want the people to have a say, they keep it due to the money they get from it)

I don't really care who wins, I just want the people to vote for the best song.

This a fun contest and I don't believe we need "professional opinions" on the performances. We just need the people who watch Eurovision to vote for their favorite acts. That's it.

I really reaaaally dislike juries.

Just a hug because being suicidal is no fun and I know because I've been there too. <3

Look.. I voted for Croatia. Croatia deserved the televote #1. Baby lasagna made a fun catchy entertaining song! But it wasn't any great musical feat. Nemos song on the other hand is increadible. But it's not really catchy or fun. But it'a soooo impressive. He combine opera and rap and insane voice transitions and even some drum and bass. I get why the jurry voted for him. His song wqs somewhat fun and catchy and it was verrry impressive. It's 100x more impressive when you hear thw clip of what hia microphone input was that I saw on tiktok. I doubt baby lasagna would sound good without all the efects and instruments. That's not a bad thing but you gotta give it to Nemo.. So I understand why the Jurry voted for him and why he won.

TLDR Nemo was somewhat fun and verry impressive. Baby lasagna was verry fun and catchy but not verry impresive.

Last years sweden however was impressive ig. But it wasn't catchy at alll... it was sooo boring imo I can't forcemyself to listen to the whole thing. There the judges should have looked at how catchy it is a bit more because it was B O R I N G!

I don’t think it’s too much power or a conspiracy, personally, but it is boring to watch supposedly very different national juries from different countries with different sensibilities all vote for the same entry over and over and over and over and something about it just feels off - shouldn’t there be more diversity of opinion coming through naturally? Other points awarded are all over the place but somehow the 12s (and a lot of the 10s) pretty much all go to the same place? I suppose it might just be a cognitive bias for that to feel counterintuitive and it’s a testament to how good a song is to get such a landslide. But it also just makes the whole thing less interesting for me. I almost prefer bloc voting politics!

Yep.

But this is the harsh reality: Not our Contest. EBU's Contest. They get to decide how the thing is scored. We have no say in the matter.

Based.

And people act like Nemo did not get any points from the televote. They got 226 points!!!! Also the difference between Nemo and Baby Lasanga is less than 10% of the score, hardly a runaway victory.