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And the Ukrainian winner is… [updated] Written by on February 28, 2011 | 7 Comments

Update: Ukraine are having another final, with the top three singers (Mika Newton, Zlata Ognevich and Jamela).

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It will take place on March 3rd, and  the winner will be decided on televoting, and only votes from “unique telephone numbers” will be considered. Why is that last detail important? Read on…

As all fans have to come to expect of Ukraines’ selection process year in, year out, nothing is entirely certain and clear cut.  Disqualifications as the show is going live to air, internal selections announced and then scrapped a week later, request to change the winning song after it’s finished; Ukraine is hardly a country which avoids drama.

With the winner of 2011 announced last weekend as Angely artist Mika Newton, we at ESC Insight were not surprised that it took only mere minutes for many fans to decry the result as bad, or worse still, false. But it wasn’t going to stop there, as rumblings within the local press called for a re-match based on comments made by NTU officials regarding the jury vote.

But there’s a deeper problem, fundamental flaw in the voting system, which we can now clearly see thanks to the official release of the results of the internet, phone and jury voting by broadcaster 1TV/NTU:

NTU results, Ukraine 2011 National Final

Table 1 – English translation of raw data, as provided by NTU (click through for full size)

To explain how the final tally was decided, NTU applied a percentage principle where the total was determined from a combination of 10% for the internet vote, 45% for the phone vote and 45% of the jury vote.  Adding these percentages together thus gives the final total and a clear winner with Mika gaining the maximum of 21 points having won in all three areas.

However, looking more closely at figures than the purely casual observer, Ukrainian media mumblings (see Kyiv Post and My City UA as a start) are denouncing the results based on what appears to be false impressions of various acts popularity in the televote and internet voting.

The unique votes represent how many individuals actually picked up a phone or logged into a computer to cast a vote.  By using these figures as well as the actual number of votes cast, we can also establish how many times on average a person voted for a particular act.

ESC Insight, in wanting to examine further what the local media has already stated, has drawn its own table using the unique votes as its basis:

Ukrainian Results based on unique voting.

Ukrainian Results based on unique voting.

Once again, the final result is determined by a mix of 10% internet, 45% televote and 45% jury vote.  The difference with table 2 is instead of raw numbers of votes recorded, results are based on the system of unique votes representing individual person interested in a particular artist, or in other words an overall voting trend amongst the population.

The above table, utilizing figures published by the NTU thus shows that based on unique votes whilst our top 3 remain the same, the order in which they finished is far different.

Going back to the broadcaster data above, and now comparing that with the unique voting data, it is clear that there were acts other than Mika Newton who had higher representation in unique voting than in raw votes cast compared to others.

It would be incorrect to say that  recording more than one vote per artist is the wrong  process, as fans should rightly be allowed to express how much  love they have for any one act.  Voting is important – numbers of votes recorded do give impressions for the most part of ones’ popularity, and financially for the broadcaster, represents a lot of the revenue-raising required to host such a contest.

What however needs to be pointed out is systems where unlimited voting is allowed and not controlled to say, for instance, a maximum of 10 votes per phone number or IP address, are open to rorting and rigging.  Obviously not every fan would be responsible for exactly 17.74 or 14.17 or 5.24 votes for the same artist, and so, how can it be determined that one number is not responsible for hundreds of votes going to one artist? Eurovision has controls for such behaviour, and perhaps this needs be offered to National Finals to avoid anyfurther controversy.

In such circumstances where a performer can gain exposure on a world stage, controls need to be in place to ensure that it is not a possibility that neither money nor power should be part of such a contest.  There should not be any chances taken that a person or company with a vested interest e.g. a record company, manager, etc can make multiple votes utilizing one phone line to get their party over the line above all others.

So the question remains, should a winner be based on pure number of votes showing an intense passion for an act amongst a smaller percentage of the population?  Or should it be decided that who receives the most amount of unique votes, speaking for a greater percentage of the public willing to vote, be the winner?

Applying business principles, like that of running a website, do you say you had 1500 visitors a day by basing it on actual numbers of visitors that come to see the site on any given day, or do you count each time a person loads a page on your website as one visit?  Is it not giving a false impression of the exposure your business actually has in the real world to use the latter?

Ukraine in its short time of participating in Eurovision may have a checkered history of selecting, however they have consistently provided quality acts that have not only qualified, but reached results in the top end of the finals table.  The country is clearly doing something right in finding talent and whilst not necessarily putting forward the heavily fan-favoured or obvious acts every year, they always seem to turn out ‘right on the night’ no matter what happens in the National Finals and the run up to the actual Song Contest.

Faith and statistics tell us that after this trial by media Ukraine can look forward to another great showing in Dusseldorf.  Whether it be with Mika Newton, who clearly is a talented performer who deservedly makes the top 3 no matter how one investigates the figures (and indeed wins on raw votes alone) or Jamala who was the fan-favourite as well as the winner according to the unique figures.  Perhaps the consistent second place Zlata who has avoided much of the controversy and has proven herself worthy should be given her chance?

What needs to happen in  Ukraine is not necessarily another national final, but a harder look at how results are actually determined and then have controls put in place, so that come 2012 there won’t be questions about the legitimacy of a winner nor repeat calls of controversy for this very talented country.

About The Author: Sharleen Wright

Sharleen Wright is the co-founder of ESC Insight and a freelance journalist and researcher. She has previously worked for numerous community radio stations in Sydney Australia, and contributed to the wider world of comedy holding production and promotions roles at both the Edinburgh Fringe and Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Her written words have appeared online, as well as The List magazine, and numerous fanzines on the topics of television and specifically, Eurovision . She is currently based in Australia and undertaking research on food and event tourism. You can follow Sharleen on Twitter (@sharly77) and Facebook (facebook.com/sharleenwright).

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Have Your Say

7 responses to “And the Ukrainian winner is… [updated]”

  1. PJ says:

    Interesting article!

  2. Boris says:

    This is Fake.
    It is not official results.
    official NTU didn’t published any o this result.
    Mika Newton has allot of fans here more than 20 000 fan-club members. (i am sure it was much more than 1999 unique telephone numbers 😉 )
    It was just a political games.

  3. Ewan Spence says:

    Boris, sorry to disappoint, but NTU did publish the full voting, and weve placed them in our own spreadsheet. The notes on unique voting figures were also provided by NTU and we simply did the maths as detailed in the article.

  4. Zlata says:

    I think this is LIE because i am a member of Mika Newton’s Fan-club and we have much more than 1900 members (about 15 000) it is impossible that only 1900 unique numbers.
    Because Hanna Herman – NTU published this Fake results.

  5. Boris says:

    Evan Spence, sorry it’s my mistake.
    I just don’t understand how this is possible )))
    Mika Newton has so many fans here…. and they say that only 1999 unique votes – just check youtube channel for Mika Newton videos.
    Her first album was realized in 2005.
    Zlata and Jamala – don’t have such a big support here.

    I’m just glad – she will represent Ukraine – she deserve it.

  6. Sharleen says:

    Thanks for your message Boris.
    As indicated by Ewan above, our figures are not fake and were provided directly off the NTU website in the day following the national final. A snapshot of the page is available if the page is unavailable to prove it indeed is true.

    The article raises specifically the question of legitimacy and measuring methods of voting in countries, and perhaps the necessity for rules to be placed regarding voting methods to avoid controversy in the future.

    I understand that since this article that the NTU has concluded that Mika Newton legitimately won the final even based on maximum 20 votes from one phone being counted, and thus she will represent Ukraine in 2011. And that is fair if it is indeed true.

    Nevertheless, investigation into voting is warranted, and should be numbers of calls controlled to prevent claims of fake or rigged results next year and inconvenience to other artists when such claims are made.

  7. Sharleen says:

    Just a final note, our data was sourced from NTU – the official broadcaster of the Ukrainian national finals. We have screenshots to prove that this is the case.

    As it is the official broadcaster and it was officially released online, then one expects that the data would not be fraudulent.

    Zlata, Without getting involved in any argument or politics, or pointing fingers at specific people at the broadcaster, any issues with the validity of the data should therefore be addressed to NTU rather than ourselves.

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