The Eurovision Song Contest 2015 is over and Israel, having made it into the final for the first time in 5 years, did pretty well. The 16 year old Nadav Guedj and his golden shoes took Golden Boy to ninth place in the overall result. Considering he performed third (a later start time closer to the actual voting is often preferred) that’s not bad. It’s also high enough to put Israel straight into the final next year without pre-qualification. Which is huge. Update: I’m told now this is no longer the case. Israel will need to qualify next year. Pity.
This year the complete voting results have been released. The voting is a combination of phone voting in 40 countries and juries in each country. The results, released as a spreadsheet, show the names and biographies of all the judges, the exact scores they gave every song and the separate telephone voting results.
So data geeks can break out the results and find out that Italy won the phone vote (not Sweden who won the combined with judges vote) and Israel were actually 7th most popular by phone voting. More analysis at the Eurovision Times blog. Here is there top 7 list:
Italy – 366
Russia – 286
Sweden – 279
Belgium – 195
Estonia – 144
Australia – 132
Israel – 104
Poor old Austria, the hosts, no matter which way you counted it, got the dreaded “nil poin” or zero points in English. Rather rude that nobody threw the hosts a little bone!
But here is the big analysis you’ve been waiting for. The geopolitical implications of this are perhaps huge!
This is the complete analysis giving the position (the higher the better) from each countries’ Televote, Jury and Combined score. There’s just too much information packed in this chart so I’m looking for help analysing it. If you’ve got observations to make leave them in the comments and I can update the post later.
And, just because it really should be all about the bass…. (or at least the music) here’s the wining song Måns Zelmerlöw – Heroes (Sweden) – LIVE at Eurovision 2015 Grand Final. And for all you Americans who still don’t get it, as I’m sharing this video, which has been on the web for barely a few days, it has just shy of 5m views.
And here was Israel’s entry as it was performed in the final by Nadav Guedj – Golden Boy (Israel)
And a little bit of the twitter love:
Bringing the fire canons and the best rhyme with 'Tel Aviv' goes to #ISR! #Eurovision
— Juliana Dever (@CleverDever) May 23, 2015
Solid gold! #ISR rocks the arena. We love it. #Eurovision http://t.co/U7ZwdhmGYd
— Eurovision Song Contest (@Eurovision) May 23, 2015
https://twitter.com/DVATW/status/602195117332688896
AND THE CROWD GOES WILD! #ISR #Eurovision2015
— Dr Brian of London 🇮🇱 (@brianoflondon) May 23, 2015
https://twitter.com/ViewtoMidEast/status/602191171511685121
Do you like my dancing? Yes, #ISR we do! #Eurovision pic.twitter.com/9T8XIM3lTj
— Eurovision Song Contest (@Eurovision) May 22, 2015
But of course… there’s this:
Unconfirmed reports that #Israel's #Eurovision2015 entry was so catchy that even Galloway was throwing shapes #ISR pic.twitter.com/Ts8COHvey5
— Zionist Federation (@ZionistFed) May 23, 2015
Though even I and Buzzfeed noticed an uncanny resemblance between Montenegro’s entrant and the infamous George Galloway:
Montenegro’s Eurovision entry really looks like George Galloway http://t.co/42oLBjvddG #Eurovision2015 pic.twitter.com/fWZNpjBFnV
— BuzzFeed UK (@BuzzFeedUK) May 23, 2015
That’s pretty icky.