Ireland and Australia: Doomed Debutants Face Junior Eurovision Voting Written by Ben Robertson on November 9, 2015 | 3 Comments

There is much to celebrate in the debut of both Ireland and Australia in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest this month. For Irish language broadcaster TG4 this is providing a unique experience not just for Irish children, but also to provide a chance to work as a part of a multi-national production and to showcase a beautiful language. For SBS in Australia, this demonstrates a long-standing commitment to doing Eurovision the right way, to be involved in all possible directions. However when the results come through from the competing nations, will the reality of Eurovision voting come back to haunt the Emerald Isle and our good friends from Down Under? Ben Robertson piles through previous results to see what these two nations might expect on the Saturday night scoreboard.

Why Would We Be Worried?

We all have heard the results through the Eurovision Song Contest and tutted at who voted to who, those trends in neighbourly voting, diaspora voting and everything else you’ve heard of. They exist unsurprisingly through Junior Eurovision scores as well. Ireland stands out in Junior Eurovision more than ever as a little isolated nation in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. There’s no UK, no France, no Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Iceland, Norway, or Belgium. Sweden withdrew last year. Even the countries with many immigrant communities in Ireland, such as Poland and Lithuania, will not be on the ground in Sofia.

For Australia, the same lump in the throat remains. Four nations (Norway, Sweden, Austria and the United Kingdom) gave Guy Sebastian either 10 points or 12 points. None of these countries are taking part in Junior Eurovision.

Guy Sebastian, 5th place in Australia’s debut Eurovision Song Contest
(Photo: Derek Sillerud)

On the other hand the south and east of Europe is well supported. There’s only 17 competitors but the Soviet bloc of Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Armenia is strong and loyal. Towards the Mediterranean we’ll spot a cluster of competitors with Albania, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bulgaria. Look even at last year’s winner Italy. Yes Vincenzo Cantiello got points from all over Europe, but the four maximum scores included the Kids’ Jury and two of Italy’s neighbours.

You can see why, as a Head of Delegation of the newcomers, a part of their  role is going to be about managing expectations. But how low should we put that bar for the expectations? That is what we’ll try and answer in this article.

Will Irish Eyes Be Smiling?

We firstly look at what to expect for the Irish delegation. The previous two years of Eurovision Song Contests have published results in full from every delegation jury member and televoting. We are able to use these results to see if competing in Junior Eurovision should give more or less opportunity for a good Irish result.

Molly Sterling, Ireland’s 2015 Eurovision Song Contest artist, did not qualify to the Grand Final (Photo: Derek Sillerud)

Our methodology is like this. For each of the two Semi Finals Ireland has competed in, we compare the results between two groups. Group A is for those countries that compete in Junior Eurovision 2015 and Group B for those that will not compete in Sofia. We compare the rankings, of both the jury and televote, to see which countries perform better or worse when we just look at the countries taking part in Junior Eurovision 2015.

Taking the full result would not be so important. We are looking here for the possible ups and downs compared to only those other nations taking part in Junior Eurovision.

For an example, let’s look at the Australian jury and televote in Ireland’s 2015 Semi Final. There were five JESC 2015 countries taking part, and they were ranked as follows from the jury and televote.

Jury: Ireland (1st), Slovenia, Montenegro, Malta, San Marino (last)

Televote: Malta, Slovenia, Montenegro, Ireland, San Marino

Comparing these relative rankings for all the voting countries in Ireland’s Semi Finals in 2015 and 2014 brings up the following scores.*

2015 Semi Final Jury Rankings (includes Italy and Australia)

2015 Semi Final Televote Rankings

2014 Semi Final Jury Rankings (includes Italy)

2014 Semi Final Televote Ranking

Overall, these results show that Ireland more than any other country struggles to score points from the countries voting in Junior Eurovision 2015. Only one of these four scores, the 2014 televote ranking, shows a higher score for those countries voting in Junior Eurovision (mainly due being ranked 1st relative to the other songs from the Maltese public). Shockingly, even when comparing just five songs, Ireland drops over one ranking point between the different voting nations in the 2015 Semi Final. In televoting that year, these countries ranked San Marino above Ireland when the results are fully combined (in this case, mainly due to a top ranking from Italy). The short conclusion here is that Ireland, more than other nations, finds it harder to score points between the JESC 2015 nations. 

This data from the past two years is good, but it does not provide anywhere near enough data to be confident of an indication that Ireland will struggle in scoring at Junior Eurovision. Continuing to look at Semi Finals we go back looking at Ireland’s record since 2008, however the only data we have is to look at the final scoreboard for each Semi Final, no full ranking publicly exists. However if we take out all the other countries except for those taking part in Junior Eurovision 2015, does Ireland do better or worse?

Unsurprisingly, the disastrous trend continues in this situation. In these six shows combined from these countries Ireland would have dropped 19 positions in the final rankings. The Irish qualification record would change from 4 in 6 to just 1 in 6 with Jedward in 2012. Yet even that qualification would be a bit sketchy, with all but one of the points scored from a freakish Russian 10 points and an anomalous 12 from the San Marino jury. However that may never have happened as the year before ‘Lipstick’ placed a lowly 16th in the Semi Final when we use the results of those eight nations that compete in Sofia.

JedMania may never have happened if only the Netherlands, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Slovenia, Belarus, Ireland and Italy voted in 2011.

It’s hard to imagine any country indeed looking through the results that would consistently do as badly as Ireland with these permutations. What is more noticeable in these tables is which countries go reach qualification and which ones would then miss out.

As we have only studied the Semi Finals Ireland has taken part in, we would expect Ireland to show up in this list more than other countries. However what I immediately spot is that the huge beneficiaries to this are the nations of former Yugoslavia. Only Slovenia is net negative in our make believe scenario, and that was only by one position. Looking through the results it is easy to conclude that this cluster of European nations has the highest chance of success in Junior Eurovision, and with Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia taking part this year they can easily capitalise. This will just further compound the difficulties for Ireland to overcome the evidenced difficulty in points scoring as these countries benefit.

Expect ‘Lenina Pesma‘, a traditional format Serbian power ballad, to be a scoring highly in the final results for JESC 2015.

Will The Aussies Score A Top Table Result Again?

Australia have many reasons to be confident going into Junior Eurovision after Guy Sebastian’s 5th place in Vienna, but using the same principle as Ireland we would be worried about the chances of Australia doing well in this competition. The voting pacts are clustered and loyal and there is less chance of finding any inroads.

To investigate the potential for this, sadly we only have one contest we can compare, the Eurovision Grand Final of 2015. There were nine countries in that show, Australia including, who will compete in Junior Eurovision 2015. Taking each of the forty nations in turn we split into two groups again based on if they will appear in Sofia or not, and then see how those nine countries were ranked in turn.

2015 Grand Final Jury Ranking

2015 Grand Final Televote Ranking

As you would expect from the Irish results, you can clearly see a divide here for Australia as well. Australia scores worse from the countries who are taking part in Junior Eurovision 2015, notably with televoters this amount extends to 1.5 positions out of only nine countries. This is a negative bias similar in magnitude to what we observed with Ireland. With juries the effect exists, but is not as strong. What is interesting to note here is that the main beneficiaries, those that do better with the JESC 2015 nations, are the Balkan neighbours of Serbia and Montenegro. 

Harder, But By No Means A Disaster

What these statistics show is that as one would expect, the voting patterns from Eurovision Song Contest history create a different bias when we focus on which countries take part in Junior Eurovision. For debutants Ireland and Australia it appears at first glance it’s going to be harder to score points from the majority of opposition countries.

However, it might be harder but it is by no means impossible. Look at the scores ‘Tonight Again’ did end up with in the 27 song Grand Final last year. 6 points from Malta. Another 6 points from Belarus. 8 from the Netherlands. 8 from San Marino, 6 from Italy and many more from countries competing in Bulgaria this month. Australia has proven it can score points from all over Europe and there is no reason Bella Paige won’t score points again. It would certainly be possible for poll-topping ‘My Girls’ to win, but expect it to be a little bit harder to score top points than Guy’s result suggested.

Bella Paige needs to be realistic, but should not fear the results come Saturday night (Photo: Andy Baker)

For Ireland as well, look for positives that come through the data set, because they do exist. I pointed out Russia’s statistically erratic 10 points to ‘Waterline’ in 2012, but the year after Russia gave ‘Only Love Survives’ 6 points in the Semi Final. A 4 points from Belarus was warmly received the same year. Netherlands threw 8 points at ‘It’s For You’ in 2010 while ‘Lipstick’ did receive a Bulgarian 7 in 2011. Again it’s harder for Ireland to score, but it’s not impossible to score from across the continent.

Both countries need to also take note of two positive things that might make Junior Eurovision slightly easier to do well than this data suggests. The first of these is that Junior Eurovision has a higher percentage of the score made up by a jury vote. We already know that San Marino and Australia will be using a 100% jury this year, as well as of course the Kids’ Jury, and it wouldn’t be a surprise for countries like Albania and Montenegro to miss the (albeit lowered) threshold for votes. A jury vote usually throws up more surprises and as we can see Ireland and Australia previously scored better from juries relative to televoters.

JESC 2013 singer Michele Perniola reading out the points from the San Marino jury in the Eurovision Grand Final of 2014.

Secondly there is that the fact that as it is Junior Eurovision it does seem that regional bias as we have demonstrated in this article is perhaps weaker. Our best casing point for this is the victory of Italy last year. At this point twelve months ago I pointed out that Italy ‘needed a miracle’ to convert ‘Tu Primo Grande Amore’ to a 1st place finish. What we got was not a miracle, just consistent voting from all over Europe. Points from every nation were given to Italy. 6 points from Russia, above both Georgia and Ukraine. 12 points from Montenegro, above Serbia and 2nd placed Bulgaria. With the smaller number of voting countries it is the spread of points rather than the number of top scores that is vitally important.

Ireland and Australia do need to be a little realistic when it comes to the scoring, and realise for a multitude of reasons their geography might make things a tiny bit harder. However they both have potential to deliver high scores regardless and no country is limited from a good result just because of their location and history.

*The countries taking part in the voting simulations obviously can not vote for themselves, so in each case have been multiplied by a small factor for balance.