Eurovision semi-final public vote analysis - how does Australia fare?

Photo credit: EBU / Sarah Louise Bennett

Eurovision 2023 will see a big change to the semi-finals with the 10 qualifiers to be chosen by the public vote alone.

Since 2010, the 10 qualifiers have been decided by a 50/50 split between the public vote and the juries.

Australia has traditionally fared better with the juries with only 'Zero Gravity' in 2019 receiving more votes from the public (140 to 121) in its semi-final.

So, does that mean Australia is in danger of not making the Grand Final? Let's see what the numbers say.

Qualifying record

If the public vote rule was in place previously, Australia would have qualified four times and missed out twice:

Qualifiers

Dami Im

Jessica Mauboy

Kate Miller-Heidke

Sheldon Riley

Non-qualifiers

Isaiah Firebrace

Montaigne

This would be a qualifying record of 67% which at first glance doesn't appear to be particularly high.

On this measure, Isaiah Firebrace is the only Australian act that would have fared differently under the new system.

However, it must be noted that Montaigne performing remotely likely impacted our chances. Also Guy Sebastian automatically qualified for the final in 2015, but the Grand Final televote results suggest he would likely have qualified from a public-voted semi-final too.

Points record compared to other nations

Looking at both the total and average points received from the public at the semi-final stage, Australia ranks quite comfortably against those competing in Liverpool.

Australia has received 461 points from the public across the six semi-finals it has competed in since 2016.

This is the 8th highest score among the 31 nations at Liverpool who will be competing in the semi-finals.

If we look at our average points from the public per semi-final, which is 76.8 points, this ranks Australia 11th among all nations in the semi-finals of Eurovision 2023.

And, if we only look at those Australia is competing against in semi-final two, we rank 4th by average vote.

If we excluded our 2021 participation, which was potentially punished for its remote performance, the average would climb to 91.8 and place us 6th overall - and 2nd among our semi-final opposition.

So, what does this tell us?

Essentially, that Europe doesn't "hate" us, and that if we have a competitive entry and performance, they vote for us really quite strongly, at least in the semi-finals.

Which nations do best with the public vote?

Portugal is the somewhat surprising top ranking nation thanks to a huge score in 2017 plus some public-pleasing English language songs in recent times.

Moldova shows up next, which traditionally does strongly in the public vote compared to juries.

And rounding out the top three is Sweden, who may have been criticised for lacking public appeal in recent times but still perform particularly well.

It must be noted that Ukraine would win comfortably if it was included in this list (they will not compete as they go direct to the Grand Final.

Full rankings of each country competing in this year's semi-finals

(Ranking is the average televote score per country from the semi-finals 2016-2022)

1. Portugal - 109.5

2. Moldova - 104.5

3. Sweden - 99.8

4. Norway - 95.0

5. Cyprus - 92.5

6. Lithuania - 87.0

7. Netherlands - 82.4

8. Serbia - 79.0

9. Israel - 77.6

10. Estonia - 77.0

11. Australia - 76.8

12. Poland - 75.2

13. Armenia - 70.0

14. Azerbaijan - 69.2

15. Romania - 67.8

16. Finland - 67.2

17. Belgium - 65.5

18. Iceland - 65.5

19. Czechia - 64.5

20. Switzerland - 60.3

21. Denmark - 55.7

22. Austria - 55.0

23. Greece - 53.8

24. Croatia - 49.7

25. Malta - 48.5

26. Albania - 43.8

27. San Marino - 43.2

28. Ireland - 37.0

29. Slovenia - 33.7

30. Georgia - 26.5

31. Latvia - 23.5

*If Ukraine were counted they would rank 1st with an average score of 158 points.

For continued updates on all the Eurovision Song Contest news follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. All links at: https://linktr.ee/aussievisionnet