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Will Poland Dominate The Online Vote…Again? Written by on November 27, 2020 | 1 Comment

The Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2019 ended, as somewhat expected, with a Polish victory. With only minor tweaks to the voting system applied this year, are we facing a Polish landslide once more? Ben Robertson investigates.

Twelve months ago I wrote a piece for ESC Insight entitled “Are Poland Unstoppable in the Online Vote?” I outlined factors such as the ability to vote for yourself and the high TV viewership in Poland as key factors – which dwarfs that of other competing nations.

It was therefore little surprise that Poland won the online vote at Junior Eurovision last year. The surprise though came in the scale of the landslide Viki Gabor and ‘Superhero’ received from the online vote.

Poland scored a whopping 166 points from the online vote, 62 points more than second placed Spain. The online vote is proportional, meaning the number of votes correlates to the number of points scored. Roughly speaking, nearly 600,000 people voted for Poland that year, with all but Spain and France securing less than half Poland’s number of votes. Nearly 16% of all the points available went to Poland last year. When one considers that in Junior Eurovision 2019 one must vote for between 3 to 5 countries, that means nearly half of all the available voters supported the Polish song last year. That matches near perfect to the viewing figures, where nearly half of all viewers across the world came from Poland’s three channels.

There is a small tweak to the voting system this year, but will it make any difference to this?

2020 Is A Different Year

The 2020 Junior Eurovision Song Contest has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Cancellation has been avoided, with some countries taking the opportunity available to them to perform in their home country. Many countries have withdrawn though, so our competition this year just has twelve competing acts.

In response to this shift in numbers, the European Broadcasting Union have decided to make each person casting an online vote only choose three entries, rather than the choice of three to five entries. This is a rational choice, with less countries to choose from one now has less votes to give.

However the concern here is that this may increase the amount of pure loyal home support Poland may receive. If we take the null hypothesis that, with more viewers watching the show, more voters vote from Poland and that they vote for Poland, reducing the amount of votes they can give to other countries will just amplify this ‘Poles-vote-for-Poland’ bloc. This is added to the fact that, with less countries competing and broadcasting, the percentage of viewers from Poland will likely increase to levels even higher than last year.

Now, we don’t have any data to support this hypothesis either way. We know viewing figures, but we don’t know where the online votes come from. We also do not know how many votes each individual casts on average, it may well be that the majority of users only vote for three entries nevertheless.

What can be said is this, Junior Eurovision online voting does two key things. Firstly, it gives those with a big audience at home, such as France, Spain and Poland, an easy chance to get-out-the-vote. It also provides a chance for smaller broadcasters and weakly supported songs to easily reach double figures – as some voters ‘throwaway’ their spare votes on non-fancied songs to give their true favourite a better chance of winning. I expect the first point will remain just as strong as ever, yet I would expect perhaps a slightly increased spread at the bottom end of the leaderboard – albeit only of a few points.

All this though forgets the most important ingredient, the song.

Poland’s Recipe For The Triple

Why Poland kept up the same identical artist selection format to select the artist for Junior Eurovision, we have a new, yet familiar, face behind the actual three minutes on stage. The previous two tracks were written by Lanberry and both pop tracks that matched their teenage artists to a tee. This year all the three songs in the final round of the Polish selection were written by Gromee, the same Gromee who represented Poland in the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest.

For Junior Eurovision Gromee has produced ‘I’ll Be Standing’, which is still very much a pop song but, a little like his Eurovision attempt, has a slight sense of plodding build up and lack of freshness.  Compared to Poland’s previous two victories this song is undoubtedly less competitive, without the hooks for radio or the power of production to appeal on the scoreboard.

Furthermore the artist, Ala Tracz, is perhaps starting half a step behind Viki and Roksana in her ability to get the vote out. Ala is just 10 years old, and unsurprisingly has less followers on social media than Viki or Roksana did at this point in previous years. Ala is a child, not a teenage pop princess, and won’t be able to get the same ‘get-out-the-vote’ push online that the other artists were able to do last year. In addition it’s likely Ala’s fans are less likely to be active enough to cast their votes than those of her predecessors.

There’s also the fact that the performances are going to be without one key advantage of performing in your home country, a passionate home audience and an atmosphere that can resonate across to everybody viewing at home.

All of these factors will reduce the advantage Poland has had over the competition in recent times – how much is an unknown factor. But none of it takes away from the biggest correlating factor of all, the countries with the biggest viewing figures do best with the online vote. While the song of Poland this year may not set social media or record sale records this year, many millions are still likely to be tuning in at home. Assuming little change in viewing figures, I’d argue that Poland could recite the alphabet and would still come top half of the online vote comfortably.

But Who Can Match Them?

But the same statement could be said for many of the other big countries in Junior Eurovision. The correlation between viewing figures and online votes in the previous years is staggeringly high, with countries at the top of the leaderboard with large viewership and a ‘get-out-the-vote’ campaign, with the smallest nations and broadcasters at the bottom. However, of the seven countries that are withdrawing from this year’s edition are, generally, the smaller nations and broadcasters at Junior Eurovision, such as Ireland, Albania and Wales. Larger nations with successful histories in Junior Eurovision such as France, Spain and the Netherlands remain, as does Russia which had the second highest viewing figures last year. Furthermore Germany makes their debut in this edition as well, with unknown voting strength.

There are some effects of this. Firstly if the throwaway extra votes to perceived ‘weak’ countries is a Junior Eurovision trend, then it is difficult to see where voters would throw their votes away to. So much so that I would suspect that the people who want to vote to just support one entry as much as possible would be more likely to also vote for their second or third favourite, rather than throw those votes away.

There’s also the effect of what is happening in each country as well. The French song last year, ‘Bim Bam Toi’ continued its success domestically after Junior Eurovision last year – eventually becoming the most watched Junior Eurovision video. Could this lead into more exposure and interest from France for their 2020 entry? Valentina, with her previous music with Kids United and a song from the same songwriting team, has a fanbase that could be easily mobilised.

At this point of the competition though we don’t see evidence of anybody being able to match Poland for popularity and interest. Within four days of release on the Junior Eurovision YouTube channel the Polish music video reached more views there than any other nation this year (one should note that a version of France’s entry ‘J’imagine’ on a different YouTube channel has more views, yet the Polish broadcaster’s uploaded version of ‘I’ll Be Standing’ also does as well). That is even true noting that the National Final version of ‘I’ll Be Standing’ was already uploaded to the official Junior Eurovision channel just weeks prior, which is still many times the views of the other videos. The hype around Poland in this competition is just on a whole different level.

There Are Two Different Scoreboards

Last year at this point I made the prediction that “I can’t see Poland not winning the online vote last year, this year, and probably most years to come.” I have a little bit of caution to that, the countries that remain in Junior Eurovision this year include all the ‘big-hitters’ and this year’s Polish song, despite interest, is not smashing through to launch Ala Tracz as the next superstar like Roksana and Viki are becoming. That said, based on the stats I see now Poland is still most likely to win the online vote, and I would be staggered if they end up outside the top three.

However what should be said is that the online vote is only half of the total scores, and a reminder is needed that in each participating country lies a jury, with children and adult music industry professionals, who will also cast their votes. Poland may do well in the online vote, but Ala Tracz needs to secure jury votes as well. What the reduced number of countries this year means is that it becomes increasingly unlikely for a country to be completely out of contention by the time the online votes are cast. The jury votes from each country are still given out to ten countries, meaning the odds are in Poland’s favour each time that they will receive points from each and every country.

While not a groundbreaking or career-launching song, ‘I’ll Be Standing’ has enough elements to get points from each country’s jury, and one would anticipate many countries being in contention to win when the online vote begins. Poland will be the one to watch bursting through the pack, whether that is enough for first place or not is a different question.

The Ethics of Fairness

Once again I find myself writing about Junior Eurovision voting systems, and focusing almost exclusively on Poland and their chances for victory. In the main Eurovision Song Contest we talk about diaspora votes from nations giving them an advantage, but that advantage is usually limited to a few nations, maybe making it easier for Romania and Russia to qualify than Malta or Montenegro. But for either Romania or Russia to win the Eurovision Song Contest they need to get support from all over the continent. So much isn’t true for Poland at Junior Eurovision – as long as the jury vote for Poland is not disastrous, Poland has such a large number of viewers that Poland alone could help Poland win in a contest that smells awfully like a horrible high school popularity contest.

That a children’s competition is like this, and is still like this, is incredibly sad.

Maybe 2020 isn’t the year for overhaul to things like the voting system, that much I am sure we can all agree with. Yet I am certain that the 2020 Junior Eurovision results will again show a disparity between the large and small broadcasters on a level of unfairness far too large to be competitively acceptable. The online voting we have today doesn’t work when social media and viewing reach are on such disparaging scales.

A solution is needed regardless of whether Poland do the triple or not.

About The Author: Ben Robertson

Ben Robertson has attended 23 National Finals in the world of Eurovision. With that experience behind him he writes for ESC Insight with his analysis and opinions about anything and everything Eurovision Song Contest that is worth telling.

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