The voting


Voting systems

  The most used voting system has been the system that's currently used: the top 10 from each country obtains 1 to 8, 10 and 12 points. This system is in use since 1975 and has always been used since then.

Before 1975 several other voting systems were in use: ten times the system was used in which each country had 10 jury members who all could award a point to their favourite song. The outcome per country was presented by a spokesperson, so a set of votes could look like e.g. "Belgium 6 points, France 2 points and Spain 2 points". In this system it has never happened that one country gave all its 10 points to another one, but two countries once awarded a 9: Denmark in 1958 to France, and Belgium in 1970 to Ireland. Neither did any country give just one point to 10 different countries, but Portugal came close giving one points to eight different countries and giving Spain one more in 1967.

In the sixties a few times a few systems comparable to the current one were in charge: each country gave either 1, 2 and 3 or 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 or 1, 3 and 5 points. The latter system, only used once in 1966 had an oddity: it was allowed to vote for one or two countries only by giving them respectively 9 points or 6 and 3 points. Only Belgium really attributed its points in the latter way though in 1965.

From 1971 to 1973 a totally different system to either of these was used: each country had two jury members sent to the host country, who all awarded a mark from 1 to 5 to each song. This way all countries were at least guaranteed 2 votes from each country!

Since it's very difficult to compare results before the system change in 1975 to those after, most records below are focused on the years 1975-now only.

Before 1997 all votes were given by national juries (varying from 2 to 16 persons). In 1997 televoting was introduced for five countries: people could vote at home by telephone. This system has become the standard from 1998 on, with some exceptions for countries that couldn't or didn't want to hold a televoting. In 2001 and 2002 countries could choose between delivering a full-televote result or a mixed jury and televote-result. Since 2004 televoting has become obligatory as the only way of voting for each country. There still is a backing jury though, in case the televoting fails, or can't be held as was the case in 2000 for the Netherlands, when a disaster on national scale made the contest wasn't broadcasted in its entirety in that country.

Since 2004 the Eurovision Song Contest featured a semifinal. This implied for the voting that all non-qualifying countries still had the right to vote in the final. This also influenced the order in which the countries were called: in 2004 this was alphabetically (based on the 2-letter ISO codes), in 2005 first the non-qualifying countries were called in the order they had appeared in the semifinal, followed by the finalists in their final running order, and in 2006 a separate draw was made. Since an increase of about 50% in the number of juries, meant a very long voting sequence, in 2006 it was decided that only the points 8, 10 and 12 were directly announced by the spokespeople. All lower points appeared on screen, but weren't mentioned.

Points score (absolute)



 FINLAND won the 2006 contest in Athens with 292 points. This score was gathered from 37 voting countries. The record with the 'traditional' twenty-something countries voting was 227 for the United Kingdom in 1997, closely followed by Ireland's 226 in 1994.
SERBIA managed to score even 298 points in the 2007 semifinal.

Points score (relative)

UNITED KINGDOM - Since the current voting system (1 to 8, 10 and 12 points per jury) was introduced the highest average score for a song was 9.647 per jury (164 points from 17 juries) for the UK enrty Save your kisses for me by Brotherhood of Man in 1976. Germany 1982 and UK 1997 complete the top 3 with respectively 9.470 and 9.457 votes per jury.

Biggest winning margin







 UNITED KINGDOM won by the biggest absolute margin of points in 1997, getting 70 points more than runner up Ireland. The biggest relative winning margin was the Italian victory in 1964 with Gigliola Cinquetti's Non ho l'età . Gigliola scored 2.88 times the amount of points of the runner up Matt Monro for the UK: 49 against 17 points.

In the 2007 semifinal though, Serbia beated runner up Hungary with even 74 points (298 vs. 224).
The biggest relative margin under the current voting system wasthe 61 points lead from Germany over Israel in 1982: Germany had obtained 1.61 times the votes of number two, Israel, where the UK in 1997 only came to 1.44 times.

Thanks to Smeckghi from Spain for his correction concerning the biggest relative winning margin, and to Achim from Germany concerning the UK artist coming 2nd in 1964

Smallest winning margin

SWEDEN won by the smallest margin ever in 1991. In fact there even wasn't a real margin. Carola's Fångad av en stormvind received as many points as Amina's C'est le dernier qui a parlé qui a raison, but won on tie-break rules. The smallest 'real' margin has been one point: in 1988 for Switzerland and in 1968 (under a different voting system) for Spain. Both times the country coming second being the United Kingdom.

In 2003 Turkey won with a margin of two points with Belgium, but there was a difference with number 3 of only three points as well!

Not taken into account but worth noting is 1969 when four countries won with the same amount of points. Since there were no tie-break rules back then all four countries were officially winner. Coming fifth was Switzerland, but with a reasonable margin

Lowest average score for a winner

GREECE - Greece in 2005 broke the old record, set by Yugoslavia in 1989. My number one scored an average of only 6.05 points per jury.

Zero points / Worst score



 NORWAY/FINLAND - Thirty-three entries have achieved to score 0 points in an ESC final, a record four of them coming from Norway (1963, 1978, 1981, 1997). Spain, Austria, Finland and Switzerland scored the dot on three occasions. Portugal and Lithuania both had the dubious honour to start off their ESC carreer with a zero result in respectively 1964 and 1994. Netherlands and Germany are the only countries having scored zero twice in two consecutive years.

In 1982 Kojo form Finland failed to impress 17 juries, that all ranked him among the 7 worst songs out of 17. So mathematically this one was the worst rated ESC song in an ESC final, at least since the current voting system was introduced in 1975.

Even more impressive was the 0 points scored by Switzerland's Piero Esteriore and The Music Stars in the 2004 semifinal. They failed to score any point from 32 countries voting, meaning all these countries ranked the song 11th or lower out of 21 or 22 which is, is votes were given out at random, even more unlikely than what Kojo achieved in 1982.

Thanks to Timoteus from Finland for pointing out Piero's result was in fact even worse than Kojo's

Average points for a runner up

FRANCE - The best runner up, when it comes to average votes per jury voting, was Cathérine Ferrey in 1976. She scored an average of 8.647. Runner up in this category are Denmark's Rollo og King in 2001 with 8.045.

Votes from every country

Sixteen songs have managed to get votes from every single country voting. Surprisingly only half of these songs were the actual winners of their respective years. The UK managed to score a vote from everyone four times, France three times. France even did so in three consecutive years (1976 to 1978), the UK once did in two consecutive years (1997, 1998). The full list of sixteen songs, with their final ranking position:

Ding dinge dong (Netherlands 1975, 1st), Save your kisses for me (UK 1976, 1st), Un deux trois (France 1976, 2nd), L'oiseau et l'enfant (France 1977, 1st), Il y aura toujours des violons (France 1978, 3rd), Making your mind up (UK 1981, 1st), Si tu aimes ma musique (Belgium 1982, 4th), Diggey-loo diggey-ley (Sweden 1984, 1st), Det lige det (Denmark 1984, 4th), J'aime la vie (Belgium 1986, 1st), In your eyes (Ireland 1993, 1st), Love shine a light (UK 1997, 1st), Where are you? (UK 1998, 2nd), Die for you (Greece 2001, 3rd), Lane moje (Serbia & Montenegro 2004, 2nd) and Shake it (Greece 2004, 3rd).

NOTE - not taken into account are the 53 songs that participated in either 1971, 1972 and 1973. In those years, due to a different voting system (see top of the page) every country got votes from everyone!

12 points (most, total)

IRELAND -Since the current voting system was introduced in 1975, 815 times "twelve points, douze points" have been awarded. With its record of seven victories (of which six in this era) it comes as no surprised that Ireland have received the most of these twelve-pointers, namely 63. The United Kingdom, as the eternal runner up, has received 12 points 60 times. France (43), Germany (42) and Sweden (40) complete the top 5. Getting one third of its 12-pointers in 2005 and more than another third from Cyprus in several other years, Greece comes on the 6th place getting 38 twelves.

All countries ever participating in an ESC final have received a 12 at least once, bar Morocco, taking part only in 1980. Andorra never participated in a final yet but received a 12 three times from Spain in the semifinal. The Czech Republic and San Marino never got a 12 in the semi either.

There were some small errors concerning the numbers; these have been corrected on 3 May 2005.

12 points (most in one contest, absolute)

UNITED KINGDOM/GREECE - Katrina and The Waves received 12 points from 10 different countries back in 1997 for their entry Love shine a light. Greece did the same in 2005 with Elena Paparizou singing My number one.

12 points (most in one contest, relative)

GERMANY - Nicole from Germany received 12 points from 9 different countries in 1982, which means that the song Ein Bißchen Frieden was the favourite song of more than the half of the 17 juries. Only Italy in 1964 did this before getting the maximum of 5 points from 8 of the 15 juries.

12 points (most countries to obtain the maximum in one year)

  Usually between one third and the half of the contestants each year got at least once 12 points. In 2005 however, an incredible record of 17 out of 24 countries got the maximum at least once, the only countries not to get a 12 in the final were Hungary, United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany, Bosnia & Herzegovina, France and Macedonia. The old record was 13 out of 24 in 2002.

Least 12 points for a winner

UNITED KINGDOM - The 1981 winner Buck's Fizz from the United Kingdom received the maximum only from 2 juries (Netherlands and Israel). Several other winners were awarded 12 three times: France 1977, Switzerland 1988, Italy 1990 and Ireland 1992. In 1981 both Germany and Switzerland got more twelves than the eventual winners. It has happened more often that a non-winner got more twelves than the winner, e.g. United Kingdom 1977, France 1990, Russia 2003.

Highest score/position without any 12s



 SWEDEN's Carola obtained 170 points for Invincible in 2006 without getting any 12-pointer and reached the 5th place

NORWAY's I evighet by Elisabeth Andreassen in 1996 is the only runner up receiving no 12's.

Curiously the Swedish title of Invincible was Evighet.

12 points (first ever)

LUXEMBOURG - The first set of votes under the current voting system was given out by the Dutch jury in 1975. The twelve points went to Luxembourg for the song Toi by Géraldine. This singer wasn't really a luxembourgeoise, but she was from Ireland, and thus she was the first of many Irish ESC artists to obtain a twelve!

12 points (longest wait for first one, country)

AUSTRIA - Austria had to wait the longest until they were finally awarded the magic maximum amount of points. After taking part 13 times under the 12-points voting system in 1989 they finally received a few 12's for Nur ein Lied, notably from the first jury to vote: Italy. Later that evening Belgium and Greece gave them the top mark too.

The Finnish had been waiting since 1977 for their fourth twelve. In 2006 finally they achieved one again, or in fact they did 8 times!

12 points (longest wait for first one, winner)

UKRAINE/ISRAEL - Most usually (on all but two occasions) the winner obtained twelve points from one of the first five juries. In 2004 Ukraine had to wait for a 12 until Estonia, the 12th country voting! Since in 2004 36 countries were voting this was over one third of the voting. In 1978 though Israel had to wait until almost the half of the voting when the 9th jury from Switzerland finally gave them a 12. When the 12s started to come in though, it hardly seemd to end for them!

12 points (shortest wait for first one, country)

HUNGARY - Hungary is the only country that managed to get 12 points from the first jury on its first participation in 1994, for the song Kinek mondjam el vetkeimet.

Bosnia & Herzgovina came close by recieving 12 from the second jury in 1993, Serbia & Montenegro got their first 12 from the third jury in 2004.

Other countries that obtained at least one 12 on their debut were Cyprus, Poland, Slovakia, Latvia, Albania, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia (and of course Serbia, the first time without Montenegro) .

12 points (most consecutive)

UNITED KINGDOM/ISRAEL - The most consecutive 12-points were received by the United Kingdom in 1997 and Israel in 1978: both got five in a row.

12 points ... and nothing more

GREECE/PORTUGAL - Greece and Portugal both managed to end up with 12 points at the end of the voting, having received them all from one single country. In 1998 the group Thalassa from Greece got the (usual) 12 points from Cyprus, but was ignored by the rest. Same fate for Rui Bandeira in 1999, who got his 12 from France.

Andorra took part in the 2004 semifinal and got its only points from Spain: 12.

Longest wait for any points (country)

  LITHUANIA - On their debut in 1994 Ovidijus Visniauskas remained pointless for Lithuania. It took after that 5 years were Lithuania to receive their first 2 points from the Croatian televoters in 1999. Possibly the Lithuanians were so disappointed after 1994 that they decided not to enter until that year.

Most points for a last place

FINLAND/BELGIUM - The highest score for a song coming last under the current voting system has been 9 points for Finland in 1996.
Should we take into account semifinals too then Lithuania came last with the highest number of points in the 2005 semi, with 17 points.

In the years 1971 to 1973 due to a different voting system, each country was guaranteed at least 2 points per jury. Belgium came last in 1973 with 58 points.

Thanks to Neil from the United Kingdom for the remark about Lithuania

First vote given out publicly

NETHERLANDS was the first country to receive a point in ESC, given out by a spokesperson of a jury. This was the Swiss jury in Basel, who gave Net als toen seven points. Netherlands were in the lead and didn't give it away that year.

In the lead from start to end

 

 


NETHERLANDS/ITALY/LUXEMBOURG/IRELAND/SWEDEN/DENMARK - Seven winners so far have managed to be in the lead from after the first set of votes, until the end of the voting without any interruption: Netherlands 1957 (Net als toen), Italy 1964 (Non ho l'età), Luxembourg 1965 (Poupee de cire poupee de son), Ireland 1970 (All kinds of everything), Luxembourg 1972 (Après toi), Sweden 1974 (Waterloo) and Denmark 2000 (Fly on the wings of love). Luxembourg though was level after a few sets of votes with Monaco in 1965.

Denmark is the only country to have managed being in the lead all the time under the current voting system.

Had only finalists been voting in 2005, then Greece would have been leading all the way through too.

In 2006 Finland took the lead after two countries voting and never gave it away, making it the longest lead ever, through 36 consecutive sets of votes.

Slowest lead (winner)

LUXEMBOURG - During the 1961 after a few sets of votes everything looked like it was going to be a British victory. The UK remained in the lead until there were only three countries left to vote, then Luxembourg having grown strongly in the end of the voting passed them by and eventually won.

In 1968 Spain took the lead with just one jury to vote, although they had been in a small lead right in the begining, to be overtaken by the UK after the second vote. Since that first country to vote was Portugal and they usually gave high votes to Spain in those years, probably nobody saw it as a real sign that Spain were going to do well.

In more recent years in 1991 it took Sweden until the 17th jury (out of 22) to get in the lead. In 2005 it took Greece until the 19th jury to get in the lead for the first time, shared with Latvia, and until the 21st to get in the lead alone, but then the voting was only about halfway.

Votings undecided until the last vote

Since 1975 it has happened four times that the winner of the contest was only decided on the very last vote (that is the 12 of the last jury). These years were:

1988 - Yugoslavia eventually gave its 12 to France, and nothing to the United Kingdom and thus Switzerland won as they were already one point ahead of the UK.
1991 - Italy gave no points to contenders Israel and Sweden, but 12 to France, bringing them level with Sweden at first place. Had Israel gotten the 12 then they would have been the winners.
1993 - The Maltese jury (that was voting last because it could not be reached earlier) gave no points to the United Kingdom but 12 to Ireland. Had they given their 12 to the United Kingdom instead, the Brits would have won by 1 point.
1998 - The Macedonian televote awarded 12 points to Croatia, and nothing to Malta, meaning that not Malta but Israel won the contest.

In 2002 Lithuania gave their 12 point (as expectable) to Latvia. Had they for some reason ignored Latvia though, there would have been a tie between Malta and Latvia. But based on tie-break rules Latvia would still have won then anyway since it got votes from as much countries as Malta, but one more twelve (of course excluding the one from Lithuania).

In several other years though the excitement lasted to nearly the end of the voting, e.g. in 1979 Spain decided the final outcome by giving 10 to Israel (but since the voting was done in performance order back then this wasn't the penultimate vote), in 1981 the 8 Swedish points to the United Kingdom were decisive and in 2003 the 10 Slovenian points for Turkey were.

In all other years after 1975 the winner was already known before the last country to vote was called.

Never been in the lead

PORTUGAL has the dubious record of having been never in the lead after any round of voting, in 41 participations. It is also the only country among those who already participated before 1993 (when countries from Eastern Europe started entering the contest) that has never been leading. The other countries that tok part in aa final at least once but have neever been leading yet are Lithuania, Macedonia,, Albania, Poland, Georgia, Armenia, Montenegro, Morocco, Azerbaijan and Belarus. Russia had surprisingly never been in the lead before 2008, when it also won. Slovenia was in the lead in 1999 after four countries voting, though shared with Iceland. Cyprus was in the lead in 1996 after two countries voting, but shared with Ireland and Croatia, and Romania was in the lead in 2005 after five countries voting shared with their neighbour Moldova.

If the 2004 semifinal voting would have been done publicly, with the countries voting in ISO order (just like in the 2004 final), then Portugal would have been leading for a moment, since Andorra gave their 12 points to Portugal!

Thanks to Pedro Miguel from Portugal for the comment about Cyprus, and Pedro Sá from Portugal for the trivia about the 2004 semifinal.

Biggest fall down after early lead

IRELAND in 1999 opened the voting getting 12 points from the 1st televoting jury in Lithuania. Not many points were to follow though: only 6, meaning Ireland eventually landed on the 17th place. Greece ended up at that same position in 2002 after getting the first 12 of the evening from Cyprus. But this time with a total of 27 points.

Best start sprint

HUNGARY is the only country who achieved getting 12 points from the first three juries to vote in 1994. The champagne was opened but it was way too early. Ireland took over the lead after 7 juries and never gave it away. Hungary ended up at a fourth place. Hungary is nevertheless the only debuting country ever taking the lead in the start of the voting.

Best/worst head-to-head result between two countries

UK/FINLAND - In the 37 contest finals before 2006 in which both the UK and Finland took part, the UK entry was always ranked higher than the Finnish entry from 1961 to 2003 . The closest Finland came to beating the UK in those years was in 1966, when they scored just one point less.

The 51th contest and Finland's first victory of course put a sudden end to this 'tradition'.. In 2007 and 2008 Finland outscored the UK again.

Among the countries participating for over 10 years now, Cyprus never beat Italy either in 10 years of participating together. The closest they came in 1989 when there was a difference of 5 points, although the margins have often been much smaller than between the UK and Finnish entries. For Cyprus it seems unlikely they'll beat Italy for the first time in the near future, since Italy doesn't show any sign of interest in returning to the ESC.

Less dramatically, after 26 years of being beaten by the UK every year, Portugal finally outscored them in 1991, and repeated that on four occasions until now.

Thanks to Timoteus from Finland for this info.

Truest friends

CYPRUS/GREECE - The countries exchanging relatively the most votes over the years have been Greece and Cyprus. Since televoting was introduced in 1998 they exchanged on average .. 12 points! In total they've exchanged on average more than 10 since Cyprus' first participation in 1981. Greece has given its 12 to Cyprus 11 times out of 18 possible, 9 of them in the last 9 contests both countries took part in. Cyprus has even given its 12 to Greece on 13 occasions. Before 1998 a mutual 12 went from Athens to Nicosia and back in 1987 for the first time, and this was repeated in 1994 and 1997. The minimum points from Cyprus to Greece has been 6 in 1990, the minimum from Greece to Cyprus ... zero, in 1983.

Least mutual points

CYPRUS/TURKEY - Cyprus and Turkey had ignored each other for 20 contests when in 2003 Cyprus gave not less than 8 points to Turkey, who eventually won. In 2004 Turkey gave its first single point back to Cyprus. Greece was the penultimate country to give Turkey the first points in 1997, but only a few minutes after Portugal had done so.

In 2006 Cyprus gave its first two points to Bosnia & Herzegovina too, while the Bosnians never voted for Cyprus yet.

There are some more countries that in at least 5 participations didn't vote for a particular other country, although all of these were voted for by those other countries at least once. Some examples: Poland still didn't get any vote from Israel, neither did Croatia ever get a vote from Denmark. There are more of these couples.

Least common score

  The least common score has been the ammount of 43 points. In 51 years of ESC not a single contestant had gone home with a score of exactly 43 points, but in 2007 D'Nash from Spain put an end to this with I love you mi vida The lowest ammount of points that has never been one's total score is now 99. Above 100 points of course there are a lot more of these scores, the lowest of them being 102 and 108.

Thanks to Timoteus from Finland for this info!