Voting at The Eurovision Song Contest

Voting At The Eurovision Song Contest

There have been many varied voting systems at the Eurovision Song Contest. Currently, the winner of the Contest is selected by means of a positional voting system. Each country ranks all the entries and assigns twelve points to their favourite entry, ten points to their second favourite entry, and eight down to one point to their third to tenth favourites. Countries are not allowed to vote for themselves.

The current method for ranking entries, first used in 2009, is a 50/50 combination of both telephone vote and the votes of juries made up of music professionals. In the past, small demographically-balanced juries made up of ordinary people were used to rank the entries. After the widespread implementation of telephone vote in 1998, juries were only used in case of televoting malfunctions or a weak telephone system. In 2003, Eircom's telephone polls system ceased to operate normally; the Irish broadcaster, RTÉ, did not receive the votes on time and instead used the votes of a panel of judges. In the first years of the telephone vote, the lines were opened for a short period after the performance of the final song. This was changed on the 2010 Contest, in which the lines opened before the first song, allowing viewers to vote during the performances, but this change was reverted for the 2012 contest.

The 1956 Contest did not have regional voting. The BBC had used the idea of contacting regional juries by telephone in their national competition to choose their 1956 song. The EBU later adopted the idea of contacting the international juries by telephone, and was used from the next contest, and used until 1993. In 1994, the Contest saw the first satellite link-up to juries.

For the announcement of the votes, the presenters of the Contest connect by satellite to each country in turn, inviting the spokesperson to read out that country's votes in French or English. Originally, the presenters would then repeat the votes in both languages, but since 2004, due to time constraints, the votes have only translated from English to French and vice-versa instead of repeating the votes in their original language. To offset the extension to voting time caused by the increased number of participating countries, from the 2006 Contest onwards, each country's one- to seven-point votes have been added automatically to the scoreboard as that country's spokesperson was introduced, with only the eight-, ten- and twelve-point scores being read out. The scoreboard displays the number of points each country has received and, since 2008, a progress bar indicating the number of countries that have voted.