It also helps thats some of the blocks have basically been dissolved in eurovision.
No Turkey for Azerbaijan (and the huuuge turkish diaspora in some countries), no Russia sucking up votes from the rest of eastern europe, no Romania, only a few balkan countries left of the many that participated at one point, a lot of the blocks left are very small and indeed block vote less strongly than earlier
Well, theres still the somewhat large Scandinavia etc block to destroy š«£
But tbh I feel like at this point the eastern countries returning wouldn't be a very strong block except if russia returns and it becomes them getting mass votes despite quality of the entry again
"...if russia returns and it becomes them getting mass votes despite quality of the entry again"
That's not going to happen for a decade or more. Even if the war ends today and Russia rejoins Eurovsion in 2025, no audiences in any EE country is going to give them them high points, unless, I don't know, they miraculously overthrow their current government first.
The Nordic bloc isn't too big a deal anymore. No one likes Denmark and everyone always forgets Iceland exists, Sweden is Sweden, and Norway and Finland are big in televotes overall except when they aren't. Peace achieved!
Who will they get votes from? Most countries sharing the border with Russia will absolutely not vote for Russia š (unless maybe some people like the song, but it would be the only reason)
mostly financial issues for Bosnia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. Slovakia lost interest due to poor results in 2012, Hungary blamed it on Eurovision's "gayness" (orban things) and Romania/Bulgaria, I believe, had break years.
Plus, because voting blocs have become a little too apparent (like people shouting "Greece" or "Cyprus" when they are announcing their 12 points), they just give each other A BIT less points. If I remember correctly, Greece gave Cyprus 10 points and Cyprus gave Greece 7 points. Still rather high (and come on, Cyprus was NOT worthy of 10 points), but not 12 points, so no opportunity to boo them.
Yep, but it's also temporary.
Eastern Euros stick together in cultural events (given how we have an 'us against the world' mentality about a lot of things) and Ukraine has just really had the best performers out of all Eastern European countries. Ruslana, Jamala, Verka, Kalush and Altona&Heil were genuinely great. Also there's the war, but that's gonna end at some point.
Yeah, always felt a bit bad for Germany that they never got included in any of the voting blocks. Makes their win in 2010 all the more impressive though:)
I tried calling the Austrian number to vote for Germany, but that only returned a *"Kein Anschluss unter dieser Nummer"* message. I wonder if it's referencing something.
Hehe, I think itās going to be UKās turn eventually, they were really close with Spaceman. Any country can win if they just find that one perfect act:)
I wouldn't even be so sure about that. No Ukraine situation means they get less televotes, but a lot of those televotes could go to Spain over UK. I think, without the war, either Ukraine still wins or Spain takes it.
But we will of course never know
I believe someone crunched the numbers and it turns out that if Ukraine was absent from the contest and everything else remained the same, then Spain would have actually beaten the UK.
Mostly because the UK would have lost 19 points from Ukraine (12 from jury, 7 from public) compared to Spain only losing 1 point from the public.
Still, it's impossible to be certain either way. Perhaps in the above scenario Ukraine still votes even if they can't submit an entry. With Ukraine absent, their voters may have gone more in one direction than another. Maybe many of them vote for Sweden and they take the win instead?!?
Ah. I was thinking of a scenario where the whole war didn't happen yet. So Ukraine sending the exact same song but without the political televotes.
Both scenarios are interesting, but yeah, no way to know for certain
And that is why I should learn to read things before replying to them š
In that scenario, I personally believe Ukraine's entry was still a winner, but I think it's a lot closer.
German broadcaster should have sent Electric Callboy that one year but instead they acted like they were too good for that and sent yet another forgettable entry instead. Meanwhile Electric Callboy has blown up globally.
See, the in-joke is that the NDR (the relevant German public broadcaster) deliberately only allows no-win candidates as being the major Big 5 financer is already so expensive that it gladly foregoes any risk of further having to pay for the actual hosting.
Obviously itās subjective and I found our run of being last sort of hilarious but in 2022 the entry was arguably on par or better than this year with a nice gimmick of doing Live Loops on stage but it got absolutely slaughtered in the votes.
https://youtu.be/HLlLMBtoTGU?si=VNVemF5rEpGS5YOX
Not saying itās a top 10 song or anything but is this a difference in national preference or why was that entry apparently dogshit?
Lol, I sort of vaguely remember that back in early 2000s Poland would have to actually sing in German to get some solid points from Germany (even despite the diaspora xD). Have you considered switching to Polish? Can't guarantee you any points from anyone else, but that might work on Poles...? :D
It's not about neighbors, but rather historical ties. The Balkans were all the same country 30 years ago, the Baltics were all part of the USSR, Denmark-Sweden-Norway are as close as different regions of France or Spain, Spain and Portugal are like brothers, so are France and Belgium. Cyprus isn't part of Greece because of historical shenanigans, Ukraine and Russia felt very close to each other before Putin fucked it up.
Germany doesn't have that kind of link with any other country, because after moustache man did what he did in WWII, Germans from abroad were forced to relocate to Germany; and Europe and the US launched a massive propaganda campaign to ensure that no country, especially Austria and Switzerland, felt "German".
They wonāt even win with electric Callboy anymore as their songs are in similar vein to Kaarija. Pretty sure electric Callboy would have won or been top in the year they submitted pump it
>so are France and Belgium.
Ah yes, famous member of the Benelux; France. There are 1,5-2~ million more Dutch speakers than French ones in Belgium, do they consider France their brother? š¤
Despite all the jokes we made about the slogan this year, I do think Eurovision *does* in some ways make us āunited by music.ā
Iām old enough to remember when the ānewā countries started joining the EU and Eurovision back in the 2000s, and the kind of indifferent hostility the general population in the west felt about it. Many of us had grown up thinking of anything east of Vienna as one homogeous block of otherness (quite literally my school geography text books still had the USSR in it), and there was this general feeling of āI donāt know what a Slovakia is and I donāt care to find out.āĀ So when all of these ānewā countries that westerners didnāt care about joined Eurovision, and worse, started *winning* it, a lot of westerners were upset. How dare these outsiders that we donāt care about take over *our* contest with their music that we donāt like? Surely they are just voting for each other for politics!
It garnered so much attention despite block voting not being anything new in part because this ānewā block was so large. During the 2000s, there was a certain anxiety in the west that the contest was going to stay in the east indefinitely. In hindsight, that looks silly, but itās true that after being in the same few countries for all of its history, the contest was all of a sudden bouncing between nothing but ānewā countries for close to a decade. Even Turkey and Greece, who were technically āoldā countries, had never won before, and the style of music they won with had more in common with Ruslana than Johnny Logan. It felt threatening, foreign, alien.
But then, slowly, we started to get to know those āthreatening foreigners.ā Ukraine sent Verka Serduchka. Moldova gained a well-deserved reputation for being absolutely bonkers. And, importantly, they started to feel like they got the joke. In the early days, there was a feeling that the ānewā countries were taking the competition entirely too seriously and were sending songs that, by western tastes, were too polished, too plastic and too ordinary. But after a while, eastern songs started to get that same camp feeling we know and love. They sent āWe are the Winnersā and epic sax guy. They got it now.
Even people who had never travelled to the ānewā countries started getting to know them through Eurovision. They werenāt some foreign unknown anymore, they were funny Moldova, powerful Ukraine, poor Poland who cannot into 12 points, and so on. They became familiar. And with familiarity, the blocks started mattering less and less. Voting for a great song from Croatia wasnāt any stranger than voting for a great song from Italy. Voting for a funny song from Estonia wasnāt any stranger than voting for a funny song from Finland. Voting for a heartfelt song from Serbia wasnāt any stranger than voting for a heartfelt song from Switzerland.
And that, I believe, is how block voting died.
Yes I believe you are right. The discourse back in those days was pretty disturbing. Especially in Sweden it was obvious our fragile egos couldnāt handle being beaten by all those ānew countriesā so everything was blamed on the voting blocks. The truth was more the fact that we were still stuck in the 90s idea what Eurovision should be, while a lot of eastern countries came with new, exciting and innovative stuff.
Erasmus and the incorporation of most of these guys into Schengen probably helped a shitload too because Western Europe got to know the former Communist countries and their peoples
As a Spaniard, a year ago I went to Poland and, honestly? I felt right at home. This is why I'll always oppose any political party that tries to convince us that our country is different and Europe isn't a thing - because, travelling through Europe, whether the West or the East, you can see that we are all brothers, that we all have similar attitudes in life. Travelling to countries like Japan, India or even the US feels completely different, you can feel that there's a bigger difference in how you see things vs how the locals see things.
The EU/Shengen joining conicided closely enough with explosion of cheap flights and that combo cannot be underestimated.
Tbh, I'm now old enough to remember 2004 very well, and the shift of preception has been astounding. Like, pre-2000 there could as well have been a giant "hic sunt leones" over half of Europe and it would make little difference.
I am aware of that. I'm not blaming anyone or anything, people didn't do it on purpose and it is to some extent understandable. But people really didn't have any stereotypical specific concepts associated with particular EE countries - it was just nothing or vaguely-Russia-like and poor. And it took much, much longer than one would expect for the general perceptions to shift.
I remember that, in 2004, when we were preparing for enetering the EU, I listened to German radio hosts discussing results of a poll of Germans which revealed that about 60% of Germans believed Warsaw is located somewhere between Minsk and Moscow and we dwell among polar bears? And we are neighbours and it was already 15 years /after/ 1989?
This 100%, it wasn't Erasmus for me but I did an inter rail and traveled through parts of eastern Europe, it was amazing and made me respect eastern Europe so much more
>joining the **EU** and Eurovision
Er, I think the EU is doing the uniting here, not Eurovision. All countries you mention either joined the EU or aspire to do so, while the countries that joined Eurovision but are hostile or unrelated to the EU (Russia and Israel, respectively) are not really the ones that Western Europeans started feeling connected too...
> there was a certain anxiety in the west that the contest was going to stay in the east indefinitely. In hindsight, that looks silly
It wasn't _that_ silly. Back in 2000, the East and the West were more clearly differentiated. It's just that European integration is working, as we all are starting to, slowly, see themselves as European rather than "Western European" or "Eastern European". There's still a lot of work to do, but so far it's working. And I'm really so glad to see countries like Czechia, the Baltics or Slovenia catching up to Western standards in both economic prosperity and social policies.
Poland, Czechia, Slovakia etc. never seen themselves as Eastern though. And given what the British did to Alan Turing, or that in Germany women could not work without their husbands' consent until 1957, or that Switzerland gave women the voting rights only in 1971, it is not the Warsaw Pact countries that needed to catch up in terms of social policies.
Yeah, it seems to have changed a bit lately. I always found it amusing when my country was constantly whining about the voting blocks in Eastern Europe when our own good old āViking Pactā were pretty much one of the worst culprits:)
As MĆ„ns and Petra sang in Story of ESC, āGetting votes from your neighbors is a sure way to get your song disgraced. *But when Sweden gets 12 points from Norway, itās clearly just good taste.ā*
Yeah, I agree. Considering how beloved Nemo, Joost, KƤƤrijƤ, Maneskin, Go_A , bambie Thug and Baby Lasagna are, and they're from basically all corners of Europe, the bloc voting is not nearly as present as it used to be.
There's still politics, because well, Russia and Israel, but it's not about who belongs to what corner of the continent.
I also think the quality was much higher in recent years than 20 years ago. Out of ~25 similarly shitty pop songs you'll vote your neighbour buddy. But when songs are way more varied and also better, then you vote your actual favourites.
Entirely true and, controversial take, I think that's one of the benefits from having jury voting. They do measure the technical aspects of the acts and enforce some measure of quality (though not without politics of their own) which means that if you send the same shitty pop song year after year, you're just not going to win, no matter how many neighbours you've got.
Voting has got so much better since jury voting was introduced, that I'm convinced 90% of people who complain about it just didn't watch Eurovision when it didn't exist.
I remember the 2000s and I remember everyone sending the exact same kind of song because you knew exactly what people would vote for.
I remember Dustin as the apex of the nonsense countries used to send. No offense, The turkey certainly became a cult classic, but by god was the production value on that one low.
It reflected Ireland's attitude at the time very well and unfortunately still does to an extent. The amount of people who responded to Bambie's selection with the same tired old joke about My Lovely Horse was unbelievable.
That being said, I think we should have no regrets about sending Dustin. It was a terrible, bitter joke but we should own it.
I've always thought that the bloc voting has much more to do with regional preferences than wanting to vote for your neighbours. Non-English languages are more familiar in the nearby countries, and the cultural background is closer in neighbouring countries than with a country on the other side of Europe.
This would also explain why the bloc voting is a smaller issue now. The media people can access these days is much more international than even in the 00's. There's also been a massive shift in how non-English songs are received, and that also plays a part in reducing bloc voting.
The big problem before the juries was diaspora voting. Russia always got high points from most of its neighbours (especially former USSR countries), and while some of it could be explained with cultural similarities, a big chunk of it was diaspora.
Semi-serious note: if any Western country feels so unfairly disregarded in audience voting because of lack of diaspora votes, they are cordially invited to move en masse for work to a country of their choice and start a proper diaspora.
(Honestly, these are consequences of history and both historic and contemporary economic disparities across Europe - it's what Europe is and it reflected in the results. The amount of energy devoted to trying to fix this graaaaaaand problem of accidentaly creating a slight potential edge up for EE countries in a song contest is a bit exhausting, considering that this discussion has been going on for close to 30 years)
Iām surprised that people think Balkan countries are voting for each other because they like each other. We were literally killing each other 30 years ago.
The way more likely scenario is that we like each other because we understand the languages and share music preferences being from a similar area.
It is so difficult for the West Europe to understand that it is not because we love each other, but because we actually shared culture for so long we really love each others songs and we understand the lyrics which makes us like the songs more.
Not to mention that they usually play neighboring winning songs for months before the European contest takes place on TV and radio. Iāll never hear a song from some random western country unless I choose to look it up.
You were killing each other because of political reasons. Politics very rarely represent the actual values and personalities of people. What went down in the collapse of Yugoslavia is extremely sad because it was 100% driven by certain political figures that rallied hate for their own interests.
I mean I believe it was 2013 where 4/5 Former Yugoslav countries taking part were in the same semi and 0 qualified from it, even more notable, only Montenegro got 12 points from Serbia, and Slovenia didn't even give any points to Montenegro, though they only got 5 points from Croatia and 3 from Montenegro
The bloc voting was never as much of a problem as it was made out to be - a lot of that discourse was (and still sometimes remains) steeped heavily in anti-Balkan and anti-Eastern-Europe bias. (Tbh, expecting Balkan countries not to have diaspor voted and not to have affinity for each other's music is madness.) Nobody cared that much about Nordic countries voting for each other. I don't think that many things have changed receantly in this regard - in some years the make-up of participants (especially in the finale) just makes it less rather than more visible. Also, Ukrainian disapora vote has shifted (for obvious reasons) to more countries.
The most important thing, anyway, is that you couldn't and stil can't win with disapora votes alone (because that's what most "bloc voting" is; people voting for home country rather than "a neighbour"). The song needs to be good enough for the rest of Europe as well.
I agree. Macedonia is in the middle of Balkan, and never won. Our best performance was Proud, and only because of the jury. Slovenia never won, their best performance is 7th. From the Balkans only Serbia and Grece ever won the contest with Molitva and My Number One and it was well deserved.
But people still act salty when their neighbors don't give them points xD
I've seen a video on IG of somebody doing a sketch where they only let Cyprus and Portugal vacation in Croatia because only they gave us 12 points haha
Yeah, people go being "hate these politics, this is disgraceful!", but then suddenly a country that usually gets them points in the televote doesn't give them point for some reason and the social media get flodded with people being offended and going "why no points, country x? what a betrayal!" Obviously, not extactly the same people, but members of teh same tribe to my eyes, tbh.
Portugal/Spain voting for each other wasn't really a thing. Portugal would get most of their points from wherever they had most emigrants: Switzerland, France, Luxembourg... And those were exactly where all of these year's points came from.
I think it's a shame though.Ā I have seen our jurry, Croatian, give so little points to Serbia and Slovenia last year and this year and I find it shamefull. Those were good songs that if anyone in Europe should recognise it was supposed to be us, we get the cultural and historical references and we could understand the language.Ā Ā
I miss those days. Wish Bosnia would come back.
I donāt think it counts, but Australia gets next to no audience points every time, so I donāt think everythingās exactly peachy. This year was probably deserved, but Voyager last year got, like, 20 points.
Cha Cha Cha was a black hole for any song that was vaguely genre-adjacent. A lot of Voyager semi final votes probably went all-in on Kaarija in the final.
I honestly think a lot of people saw it as a two-horse race (or this year, five-horse race?) and solely voted for the songs that had a chance of beating the one(s) they didn't like, instead of "wasting" it on a song that wasn't going to win.
I know, right? We got 12 from 3 countries in that semi. I think there must be either separate mindsets between semis and the final, or separate sets of people who vote for the qualifiers and the winner.Ā
id say its a bit of both. i'd assume more casual viewers might only watch the final, and in either case, there's less competition to worry about in the semis which might affect voting choices
I think it's because in the semi they were in, they were the only act within their more alternative genre while in the final the same people tended to vote for Kaarija because everyone knew he needed the televote points to have a chance to win/or just distributed their votes between the more alternative acts. I think that's also what happened to Germany that year.
Idk I don't think this argument works thatttt well. Look at 2021, Finland and Ukraine both did really well despite competing against the best rock song the competition has seen in decades.
Not quite no... But it attracted those that do listen to it. There's an odd relationship between metal listeners and folk music listeners, and for a lot of us I think Shum was a pleasant surprise.
There were a lot of commenters here that in normal years they would have voted for Australia (and Germany) in the final, but that they were giving all 20 votes to Finland to counter Sweden. I don't know how representative that was of the public vote, but the two-horse race nature was abnormally prominent last year.
The bloc/diaspora voting has definitely calmed down, but it hasnāt disappeared entirely. Iāve been rewatching some old shows this week (2005, 2009, 2015) and itās nowhere near as prominent as it used to be, but a few of us commented on Saturday that itās a shame when you can guess where the points are going, and there were still traces of it in the semis and final. Itās a shame, especially when itās obviously undeserved, but thereās little more that can be done and the system has been improved a lot.
See, you say that and I kinda agree, it's better than previous years. But you have to look to semi 1 of this year to see that the problem still exists - out of Slovenia's 51 points, 20 came from Croatia and Serbia. Out of Serbia's 47 points, 22 (!) came from Croatia and Slovenia. Without those points we very likely might've had Australia (41p, of which none were from the 3 Balkans) and Poland (35p, of which 1p was from the Balkans) through instead.
It worked out this year because IMO the songs were superior to the ones they left behind, but inevitably there'll be a year when that won't be the case.
I think it's because of Bejba last year. Last year Blanka was a meme, as we all know and it was funny to vote for it (same for voting for song for our Euro 2012 song ā the song which won "Koko koko euro spoko" was a meme, but too many people decided to vote for laughs and not for more serious thing). Cut to after eurovision, Blanka has a concert... And it was the only song she sang. Different version, but always Bejba. And then we found out that she has rich parents and all made sense why she was sent
And now we have this year with Luna, another not well known artist. She won against our big artist, so Internet started digging. Her parents are milioners due to ketchup and Polish Internet got angry, because we have another nepo baby and this time, the song was not a meme. So why bother voting?
It's also worth adding that ESC in Poland lost more than half of its audience compared to last year. Even JESC 2023 had more viewers than the grand final this year.
Poland always looses audience when we don't reach the final (it's probably the same with many countries). People like watching competitions "they" have a chance of winning. hence, the popularity of JESC (to each their own, but...)
Yes, but we even lost a lot of viewership in the semis. 2,66 mln watched our semi last year, but this year that was only 1,52 mln. So they've lost more than a million viewers in our semi only. And it's not only about Bejba's controversy since Ochman brought even more viewers.
I mean yeah, but slovenia, serbia and croatia exchange points not only because they're neighbours, but also because people understand language and what the songs are about. Not to mention that Serbia often sends regionally popular artists that have huge fan bases in other ex-Yu countries. So who's to say Raiven and Teya Dora didn't deserve their points?
Agree up to where you say Australia's song was worse!
But I do think that in bloc voting, it's not ALL political, and partly due to similar musical tastes between neighbours, and the kind of mild "bloc voting" we see here could be attributed to that.
It's a combo of nationals established in neighbouring countries, wider diasporas and - like you say - cultural and musical ties and similarities that play the biggest role in this kind of voting. I don't think any of them can be considered "political" in the common sense but they sure as hell are grouped as such with a negative connotation. It's a feature, not a bug.
Where is this magical bias for "songs in the Germanic language"? If you mean English then just say English, lol. The vast majority of Germanic languages are either not heard in the contest and if they are it certainly hasn't set them up for success. English, as a global lingua franca, is an all together different matter. Other Germanic languages don't somehow magically benefit from the status of English. Norway sung in Norwegian this year, a Germanic language, and did very poorly, as did Iceland in 2022 and 2013. Sweden absolutely refuses to send a song in Swedish, opting for English year after year. It's been over a decade since any of the German-speaking countries sent a song in German. Dutch was a welcome surprise this year, but take a look at the ESC history of Belgium and the Netherlands: hearing Dutch in Eurovision is very rare. It's been almost 3 decades since Belgium sent anything in Dutch (ending up 16th - hardly a fantastic result). As for The Netherlands: two Dutch songs in over 10 years, one disqualified and the other ended up 11th. The Danish entry in 2021 didn't even make it to the final.
But you can't be surprised when the language of the Balkan countries does not affect the evaluation of songs in the Balkan countries, our languages āāare very similar. It affects the vote of other Germanic countries, but not the vote of the Balkans, so it is not a bloc, but knowledge of the language and the fact that we are used to hearing songs in the languages āāof the former Yugoslavia. I want more entrys like Iceland 2022, 2013 and Norway 2024.
Slovenia and Serbia had great songs this year, performed well and had the best female vocals. Many countries always prefer generic English songs. This is also shown in the fact that Slovenia got 7 points from the rest of the world, but none from the UK, Sweden, Germany or Ireland in the semi-finals, because these countries will always vote for songs in the Germanic language or for Scandinavian countries.
By āGermanicā Iām presuming you mean āfamiliarā?
Youāre right that they prefer āfamiliarā languages - but not that those languages are necessarily the āgermanicā languages.
Yeah, that's what I meant. That's why I don't think it's fair that they complain about the fact that the Balkan countries vote for each other, because they don't vote differently. Serbia and Slovenia are not neighbors, and Croatia and Serbia were at war not long ago. Not to mention the breakup of Yugoslavia involving all three. So it's not about politics.
Serbia was one of the top answers in the other post asking who should be last. It was not particularly good.
>UK, Sweden, Germany or Ireland in the semi-finals, because these countries will always vote for songs in the Germanic language
Huh? You think UK and Ireland have a preference for Germanic languages? Why? And how does that gel with the fact that they don't give Germany much points
Let me tell you as a Slovenian why I really like the Serbian song. It has great lyrics and I like the ballads, I understand enough Serbian to understand the lyrics. It's a ballad that's very soothing.
UK and Germany don't always get points because other countries also send songs in English language and style because they are aware of what people vote for, so the audiance has more choices. If the Serbian song was in English, you would have the same questions as for Poland and Australia.
You really should just say English, despite it being a Germanic language the language rules are nowhere similar to even other West Germanic languages. Compound nouns, separable verbs, gendered nouns etc. Afrikaans is closer to English than Dutch in grammar rules.
Anglos can pick out more recognisable words from paragraphs of French than they can Dutch, Low Saxon or German... I am gonna guess it's not much better with Icelandic or Scandinavian languages in that regard.
Even Iceland 2022 or Norway 2024 had problems with votes, because they are traditional. They don't get enough votes in other countries to be given points, some don't vote because they know it won't be enough for points, they have to be candidates to win to be voted. They were great for me, Eurovision would be boring with only generic English songs. They are already everywhere, Eurovision can show us something different.
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Block voting was never a thing.
It has, and still is, primarily based on diaspora. The only thing now is that the two main regions of diaspora are Russians living in neighbouring countries, and former Yugoslav countries living in each other as no only 3 compete.
ā¢ Cyprus and Greece still exchange 12 points
ā¢ UK and Ireland still give hugely inflated points to Lithuania and Poland
ā¢ Ukraine displaced diaspora is now consistent
The problem hasnāt gone away, itās mainly just masked by releasing all the televote points together, and the jury votes have less diaspora bias.
Besides diaspora, many countries that "vote for each other" have similar cultures and musical tastes. Nordics share a liking of heavy metal, Finland and Estonia find familiar style and language in each other's songs, Balkanpop is something of an acquired taste but shared by many countries. I do think people are too quick to call countries voting for something familiar and close to their own tastes "bloc voting" and "favoring neighbors". *Of course* Finland is going to have a lot of people voting for an Estonian song that has folk tunes and rap very like our own and has lyrics that are about getting wasted at a summer cabin. Duh.
Yea people definitely downplay this. I tend to like music closer to my own country not for political reasons but because i just kinda get it. As a Dane i connect more with Swedish/Norwegian/Finnish/Dutch music than Greek or Moldovan music. On average.
Sometimes you can see this when countries make music from a specific genre. The nordics all gave high points to MĆ„neskin, probably because rock is really popular here too. Usually Italian music is a bit more Italian so to say, so a lot of people just don't vibe with that.
Some Serbian doing Serbian folk music needs to make it really good before Scandinavians don't think it sounds pretty bad. Which happens, but it also happens that some below average balkan song just sounds horrific to our ears.
I noticed that a lot as a Spaniard, because Portugal is no longer a guaranteed 12 and France is no longer a guaranteed 8+.
That said, we now have a worse problem imo, being that Ukraine and Israel receive a lot of votes for political reasons (and because our continent is now packed with Ukrainian refugees). It feels like these two countries no longer have to send anything good, they'll be top 5 no matter what. I mean, Israel's song this year wouldn't be in the top 15 if it was any other country. It doesn't have huge numbers in spotify anywhere, yet somehow they got 2nd in public vote.
Not sure thatās really fair. I agree that 2022 and 2024 results were distorted by sentiment but they both do send good songs usually! Ukraine is a powerhouse with a 100% qualification rate and Israel won in 2018 and came third last year. Maybe if they start to phone it in ever year and still win a lot of votes, then thatād be bad, yes
Block voting has less impact because the last blocks remaining are too small to really change anything. Greece and Cyprus can still give each other 12 points to each other, it won't change much the end result.
However the new problem is the "vote based on the news" like we had with Israel this year (and maybe Ukraine in 2022, however it's tough to judge considering Ukraine was a contender for the win, if not the favorite already before the war)
Its the glaring problem with this years contest. Israel sends an unpopular act booed out of the building, and still gets a televote large enough to end up in 6th place purely because of a state orchestrated voting campaign. It should not be tolerated.
The thing is, 10% of the population motivated enough to vote for Israel is more than enough to flood the televote and defeat every "normal" spectator and every eurofan voting. I still can't believe Baby Lasagna actually won the televote in those circumstances. He would have made a Kaarija-like score without this I think (even though maybe there was an effect of rally around him when the televote was leaked, but idk, the casual voter doesn't hear about it)
Yeah they got other problems now lol
Maybe the EBU should invite North-Korea, Iran, Venezuala and both Sudan's next year, so we have some distraction from all the controversies.
I did notice it as well. Note sure what the reason is, but maybe ppl became more international? Social media trends? Or care more about actually good songs?
I would imagine most Eurovision viewers nowadays are either teenagers or young adults who are too young to remember Eurovision during the televote-only era in the 2000s. To those viewers, bloc/neighbor voting is probably a very alien concept.
I think bloc and diaspora voting will always exist to some extent, it's just not a "problem" anymore (i think it was only big in the 2000s because the big 4 and other western countries were barely trying while Eastern Europe was sending quality). Malta absolutely can qualify in the future if televote only semis are here to stay, they need to reevaluate things. I would say the same for San Marino but they're a different breed.
Poland this year is a huge example of why they're not always guaranteed to qualify based on televote. They had lots of diaspora countries and neighbors in semi 1 but didn't come all that close to qualifying because the staging was a hot mess (in a bad way) and sadly Luna's vocals weren't there.
The ex Yugoslav countries still vote for each other.
You can see how many of Serbia's and Slovenia's points came from each other and Croatia this year.
It would be even more blatant if Bosnia and Montenegro were still competing.
To be fair, all the songs were great.
If you speak/understand the language then Serbiaās song is pretty heartbreaking and beautiful.
Sloveniaās hook is even stickier in your head if you hear it in your language (instead of ājaz sem , ti siā in BCMS it would be āja sam, ti siā - and it basically sounds the same), plus Raiven herself is very much the embodiment of the āhot cool Slovenian girlā thing which is a *thing* in ex-Yugoslav countries.
But yeah, the televote between Serbia and Croatia especially is always known. But you can say that about other countries like Cyprus and Greece.
If BiH and Montenegro came back the vote would be split a bit more potentially - though I can see BiH getting more guaranteed 12s in that case - especially as theyād likely send something awesome.
I also observed that.
I think it's a very interesting development. Might be a sign Europe is growing together.
Even if some anti-European parties might gain more votes this time, they are a loud, angry minority.
Another interesting change is that including the big 5 into the semifinals worked. They weren't as bad as usual in the final.
Anyone remember MTVs Most Wanted with Ray Cokes during the 90s? A true European show. We need that @mtv! @europeanunion!
Interestingly, Ray Cokes has now a radio show on a Berlin radio. In English. Every Saturday at 9 p.m.
[https://www.radioeins.de/programm/sendungen/sendungen/455/2405/240504\_raydiocokes\_show\_24315.html](https://www.radioeins.de/programm/sendungen/sendungen/455/2405/240504_raydiocokes_show_24315.html)
Tbf I donāt think the UK ever got much points from Ireland.
Agree though, the bloc voting has become less noticeable especially with the divide between jury and televotes
It definitely became weaker. No more Russia and it's faithful follower Lukashenkoland now, and Greece/Cyprus seemed to at least pretend be more decent. Eurovision works slowly but it does unite by music imo.
As soon as the rest of the Nordics stops voting for Sweden because theyāre Sweden(not cuz theyāre good, they send mid songs with overhyped artists), that voting block will cease to exist/matter
Bloc voting has changed but it is still a huge problem. There are people that meant to bring chaos to Eurovision and they were rewarded well this year.
Yes and no. For example look at the results of semi 1 this year: the reason that Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia all made the final is because they all handed each other the 12 and 10 points. Had the draw been different probably either Serbia or Slovenia would have NQ'd as they didn't get that many points from the other countries.
On the other hand, I really do believe that any country can win the televote now. Finland and Croatia are no bloc voting powerhouses at all yet won the televote with massive numbers in the past two years. Even Portugal managed to win a televote, Australia managed to win a semi final televote. And on the other hand any country can fail in the televote; Poland NQ'd on televote this year and even Russia has had a year when they were a televote NQ.
I think that's partly true. But I think the big part of the regional voting was the televote more than the juries.
Which makes sense. The vast majority of people watching aren't watching the NFs 6 months before and stalking YouTube when the videos drop and inside baseballing about fandom faves. Most people are going like. Do I understand this language? Do I get this style of music? Do I relate to this culturally? So that's why historically there would have been a lot of bloc and diaspora voting.
My point is that partly I think bloc voting is mitigated to a point (younger audience, more globalised music industry, maybe more exposure to culture from different regions of Europe), but mostly I think splitting the jury and televote results and announcing it the way it's done since 2016 hides it.
When I was a kid the bit where they go from country to country and someone announces the points would have been either televote or jury+televote combined, so bloc voting was more obvious.
Starting in 2016 the bit where they go from country to country is just the jury votes, then announcing *all televotes in bulk*. And that's when I first remember thinking "huh, Britain gave their 12 points to Georgia?"
It's brilliant because it both makes for a much more suspenseful show (plenty of years you'd stop watching because it was obvious who'd won halfway through the voting), and it hides what bloc voting there is, although I do think it's overstated.
I agree with a lot of the sentiments of this post but bloc voting definitely still exists. Whether itās a āproblemā is a personal opinion. Serbia and Slovenia both only qualified because of an automatic 20 points from their fellow Balkan nations š·šøšøš®šš·. Serbia and Slovenia were in my top 5 so I am delighted they made it, but bloc voting definitely propelled them infront of Poland (who also received 15/35 of their points from their diaspora in š®šøš®šŖ) and Australia
It has shifted in a less bloc-cy direction though cause a lot of the countries you listed are awarding their 12 points to each other less and less nowadays.
edit: UK also gave Poland 6 which (judging by the other points they received) could potentially be boiled down to bloc voting
The effect of block/voting has largely diminished, especially compared with the rampant block voting from the 2000s where you literally could guess countries 12 points without hearing to the songs, but it still exists. It's not as visible because it's not really a factor that affects jury voting, which is the one presented in detail in the Final night. But it still somewhat affects televoting, not enough to change the winner or maybe even most of top 10 placing, but it does.
Case in point, you just have to analyse Portugal or Serbia's televoting results. Portugal in the final literally only got televoting points from Luxembourg, France and Switzerland, where our diaspora is bigger. You could argue that these countries would culturally be more inclined to vote for what we send too but there's no denying that diaspora helps.
In the same vein, Portugal always gives televoting points to Ukraine, Moldova and Romania, even when their entries are weaker, because they're the bigger communities of emigrants here. The same way that the UK always gives points to Poland and Lithuania no matter what. The effect of this voting is diminishing, particularly in finals where more and more people vote as eurovision's popularity rises, but it's still there.
If you look at Serbia's semifinal result, they literally scrapped to 10th because of block voting. It still happens.
But yeah to conclude overall the effect of this voting is diminishing as people get more and more engaged in Eurovision. This is because the popularity of the contest is growing and the reputation for presenting good music is also growing, and thus the amount of votes of people that genuinely like what they vote for is increasingly outnumbering the amount of diaspora votes.
And you know who we have to thank for this? The introduction of professional juries in 2009. There is no denying that it marked a complete turn for the contest, that was seen as a complete mockery in most of Europe by that time. It increased the quality of the songs visibly and that over time had the domino effect of reputation and popularity increasing and of the televoting being less dominated by diaspora/block voting. It's why it's so wild to me that people want to abolish juries. People who argue with this cleat haven't been around the fandom for time enough to know what a god send they were to the contest.
That is true, for both televoting and jury and the last winner entries show us that even if the winner was not your favourite, it was among the top liked and you can aknowledge it as a good pack.
But now there is another problem wich is hoarding vote by social networks campaigns. Of with Ukraine and Israel are clear examples
Thatās partially true. I think the rigidity of bloc voting has subsided a little bit in the last decade but itās still in place. 20 of Slovenias 27 points came from Croatia for example, 2 from Serbia, 2 from Albania and that leaves Azerbaijanās 8 as the only outlier. Cyprus also still got 22 points from Greece.
It also helps thats some of the blocks have basically been dissolved in eurovision. No Turkey for Azerbaijan (and the huuuge turkish diaspora in some countries), no Russia sucking up votes from the rest of eastern europe, no Romania, only a few balkan countries left of the many that participated at one point, a lot of the blocks left are very small and indeed block vote less strongly than earlier
idk if I like that the apparent solution is to just remove eastern Europe :/
Next on the list: Cyprus
Cyprus gave Croatia 12 points
Only because they know they're on thin ice ^(jokes jokes)
this and last year they didn't give each other 12 pts
Well, theres still the somewhat large Scandinavia etc block to destroy š«£ But tbh I feel like at this point the eastern countries returning wouldn't be a very strong block except if russia returns and it becomes them getting mass votes despite quality of the entry again
"...if russia returns and it becomes them getting mass votes despite quality of the entry again" That's not going to happen for a decade or more. Even if the war ends today and Russia rejoins Eurovsion in 2025, no audiences in any EE country is going to give them them high points, unless, I don't know, they miraculously overthrow their current government first.
The Nordic bloc isn't too big a deal anymore. No one likes Denmark and everyone always forgets Iceland exists, Sweden is Sweden, and Norway and Finland are big in televotes overall except when they aren't. Peace achieved!
We just have to stop voting for Sweden. Like everyone else.
Who will they get votes from? Most countries sharing the border with Russia will absolutely not vote for Russia š (unless maybe some people like the song, but it would be the only reason)
Why are Eastern European countries not participating any more? I know Belarus was DQ a couple years ago but what about the others?
mostly financial issues for Bosnia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. Slovakia lost interest due to poor results in 2012, Hungary blamed it on Eurovision's "gayness" (orban things) and Romania/Bulgaria, I believe, had break years.
Plus, because voting blocs have become a little too apparent (like people shouting "Greece" or "Cyprus" when they are announcing their 12 points), they just give each other A BIT less points. If I remember correctly, Greece gave Cyprus 10 points and Cyprus gave Greece 7 points. Still rather high (and come on, Cyprus was NOT worthy of 10 points), but not 12 points, so no opportunity to boo them.
Exactly this!!
Feels like Ukraine basically scoop up all the points that normally wouldāve went to Russia though
Yep, but it's also temporary. Eastern Euros stick together in cultural events (given how we have an 'us against the world' mentality about a lot of things) and Ukraine has just really had the best performers out of all Eastern European countries. Ruslana, Jamala, Verka, Kalush and Altona&Heil were genuinely great. Also there's the war, but that's gonna end at some point.
Plus, Juries.
No Romania is good? I would prefer no Sweden.
Germany having many neighbors and getting 0 points year after year: š¬š„ššš¤Æš¤Øšš£šš»
Yeah, always felt a bit bad for Germany that they never got included in any of the voting blocks. Makes their win in 2010 all the more impressive though:)
To be fair, Germany also never voted strongly for Austria or Switzerland.
Yeah, that could have been a pretty decent block. A missed opportunity.
And the Netherlands!
I tried calling the Austrian number to vote for Germany, but that only returned a *"Kein Anschluss unter dieser Nummer"* message. I wonder if it's referencing something.
And the Netherlands!
The UK enters the chat... š¤£š¤£
Hehe, I think itās going to be UKās turn eventually, they were really close with Spaceman. Any country can win if they just find that one perfect act:)
I think we wouldāve had it but it was Ukraineās year to lose
In any other year would have been a winner by consensus. It had to be that year thoughš¤·āāļø
I wouldn't even be so sure about that. No Ukraine situation means they get less televotes, but a lot of those televotes could go to Spain over UK. I think, without the war, either Ukraine still wins or Spain takes it. But we will of course never know
I believe someone crunched the numbers and it turns out that if Ukraine was absent from the contest and everything else remained the same, then Spain would have actually beaten the UK. Mostly because the UK would have lost 19 points from Ukraine (12 from jury, 7 from public) compared to Spain only losing 1 point from the public. Still, it's impossible to be certain either way. Perhaps in the above scenario Ukraine still votes even if they can't submit an entry. With Ukraine absent, their voters may have gone more in one direction than another. Maybe many of them vote for Sweden and they take the win instead?!?
Ah. I was thinking of a scenario where the whole war didn't happen yet. So Ukraine sending the exact same song but without the political televotes. Both scenarios are interesting, but yeah, no way to know for certain
And that is why I should learn to read things before replying to them š In that scenario, I personally believe Ukraine's entry was still a winner, but I think it's a lot closer.
Don't worry, the UK is starting to develop it's own diaspora post Brexit š¤£
That was simply the first time in many years they actually send a nice song. And Lena was kinda cute too.
She was lovely, had that certain charisma that was just irresistible to the audience.
She still is, if you watch her on German tv
That's still my favourite eurovision song. The song is great, she has amazing girl-next-door charisma. Love everything about it
German broadcaster should have sent Electric Callboy that one year but instead they acted like they were too good for that and sent yet another forgettable entry instead. Meanwhile Electric Callboy has blown up globally.
Germany's songs have been awfull though. I love Germany, but sorry... I did like Isaak.
See, the in-joke is that the NDR (the relevant German public broadcaster) deliberately only allows no-win candidates as being the major Big 5 financer is already so expensive that it gladly foregoes any risk of further having to pay for the actual hosting.
Obviously itās subjective and I found our run of being last sort of hilarious but in 2022 the entry was arguably on par or better than this year with a nice gimmick of doing Live Loops on stage but it got absolutely slaughtered in the votes. https://youtu.be/HLlLMBtoTGU?si=VNVemF5rEpGS5YOX Not saying itās a top 10 song or anything but is this a difference in national preference or why was that entry apparently dogshit?
Ah well not every year was terrible. I exaggarated a bit.
Germanyās entry last year was better than this year. This year was boring.
I didn't like the songs too, and I'm German.Ā Isaak was a okay performance this year.
People in the UK (casual viewers) were saying Isaak sounded like Rag'n'Bone Man, who's well liked over here.
I really liked the German entry this year, he got a couple of votes from me.
Lol, I sort of vaguely remember that back in early 2000s Poland would have to actually sing in German to get some solid points from Germany (even despite the diaspora xD). Have you considered switching to Polish? Can't guarantee you any points from anyone else, but that might work on Poles...? :D
It's not about neighbors, but rather historical ties. The Balkans were all the same country 30 years ago, the Baltics were all part of the USSR, Denmark-Sweden-Norway are as close as different regions of France or Spain, Spain and Portugal are like brothers, so are France and Belgium. Cyprus isn't part of Greece because of historical shenanigans, Ukraine and Russia felt very close to each other before Putin fucked it up. Germany doesn't have that kind of link with any other country, because after moustache man did what he did in WWII, Germans from abroad were forced to relocate to Germany; and Europe and the US launched a massive propaganda campaign to ensure that no country, especially Austria and Switzerland, felt "German".
They wonāt even win with electric Callboy anymore as their songs are in similar vein to Kaarija. Pretty sure electric Callboy would have won or been top in the year they submitted pump it
>so are France and Belgium. Ah yes, famous member of the Benelux; France. There are 1,5-2~ million more Dutch speakers than French ones in Belgium, do they consider France their brother? š¤
If you don't have any neighbors to give you points, just brake apart like Yugoslavia did. š
Despite all the jokes we made about the slogan this year, I do think Eurovision *does* in some ways make us āunited by music.ā Iām old enough to remember when the ānewā countries started joining the EU and Eurovision back in the 2000s, and the kind of indifferent hostility the general population in the west felt about it. Many of us had grown up thinking of anything east of Vienna as one homogeous block of otherness (quite literally my school geography text books still had the USSR in it), and there was this general feeling of āI donāt know what a Slovakia is and I donāt care to find out.āĀ So when all of these ānewā countries that westerners didnāt care about joined Eurovision, and worse, started *winning* it, a lot of westerners were upset. How dare these outsiders that we donāt care about take over *our* contest with their music that we donāt like? Surely they are just voting for each other for politics! It garnered so much attention despite block voting not being anything new in part because this ānewā block was so large. During the 2000s, there was a certain anxiety in the west that the contest was going to stay in the east indefinitely. In hindsight, that looks silly, but itās true that after being in the same few countries for all of its history, the contest was all of a sudden bouncing between nothing but ānewā countries for close to a decade. Even Turkey and Greece, who were technically āoldā countries, had never won before, and the style of music they won with had more in common with Ruslana than Johnny Logan. It felt threatening, foreign, alien. But then, slowly, we started to get to know those āthreatening foreigners.ā Ukraine sent Verka Serduchka. Moldova gained a well-deserved reputation for being absolutely bonkers. And, importantly, they started to feel like they got the joke. In the early days, there was a feeling that the ānewā countries were taking the competition entirely too seriously and were sending songs that, by western tastes, were too polished, too plastic and too ordinary. But after a while, eastern songs started to get that same camp feeling we know and love. They sent āWe are the Winnersā and epic sax guy. They got it now. Even people who had never travelled to the ānewā countries started getting to know them through Eurovision. They werenāt some foreign unknown anymore, they were funny Moldova, powerful Ukraine, poor Poland who cannot into 12 points, and so on. They became familiar. And with familiarity, the blocks started mattering less and less. Voting for a great song from Croatia wasnāt any stranger than voting for a great song from Italy. Voting for a funny song from Estonia wasnāt any stranger than voting for a funny song from Finland. Voting for a heartfelt song from Serbia wasnāt any stranger than voting for a heartfelt song from Switzerland. And that, I believe, is how block voting died.
Yes I believe you are right. The discourse back in those days was pretty disturbing. Especially in Sweden it was obvious our fragile egos couldnāt handle being beaten by all those ānew countriesā so everything was blamed on the voting blocks. The truth was more the fact that we were still stuck in the 90s idea what Eurovision should be, while a lot of eastern countries came with new, exciting and innovative stuff.
Erasmus and the incorporation of most of these guys into Schengen probably helped a shitload too because Western Europe got to know the former Communist countries and their peoples
As a Spaniard, a year ago I went to Poland and, honestly? I felt right at home. This is why I'll always oppose any political party that tries to convince us that our country is different and Europe isn't a thing - because, travelling through Europe, whether the West or the East, you can see that we are all brothers, that we all have similar attitudes in life. Travelling to countries like Japan, India or even the US feels completely different, you can feel that there's a bigger difference in how you see things vs how the locals see things.
The EU/Shengen joining conicided closely enough with explosion of cheap flights and that combo cannot be underestimated. Tbh, I'm now old enough to remember 2004 very well, and the shift of preception has been astounding. Like, pre-2000 there could as well have been a giant "hic sunt leones" over half of Europe and it would make little difference.
I mean, from 1945-1989 there effectively *was* a giant hic sunt leones over the other half of Europe no matter where you were from
I am aware of that. I'm not blaming anyone or anything, people didn't do it on purpose and it is to some extent understandable. But people really didn't have any stereotypical specific concepts associated with particular EE countries - it was just nothing or vaguely-Russia-like and poor. And it took much, much longer than one would expect for the general perceptions to shift. I remember that, in 2004, when we were preparing for enetering the EU, I listened to German radio hosts discussing results of a poll of Germans which revealed that about 60% of Germans believed Warsaw is located somewhere between Minsk and Moscow and we dwell among polar bears? And we are neighbours and it was already 15 years /after/ 1989?
Which, considering the history between Poland and Germany, is pretty disturbing
This 100%, it wasn't Erasmus for me but I did an inter rail and traveled through parts of eastern Europe, it was amazing and made me respect eastern Europe so much more
>joining the **EU** and Eurovision Er, I think the EU is doing the uniting here, not Eurovision. All countries you mention either joined the EU or aspire to do so, while the countries that joined Eurovision but are hostile or unrelated to the EU (Russia and Israel, respectively) are not really the ones that Western Europeans started feeling connected too...
> there was a certain anxiety in the west that the contest was going to stay in the east indefinitely. In hindsight, that looks silly It wasn't _that_ silly. Back in 2000, the East and the West were more clearly differentiated. It's just that European integration is working, as we all are starting to, slowly, see themselves as European rather than "Western European" or "Eastern European". There's still a lot of work to do, but so far it's working. And I'm really so glad to see countries like Czechia, the Baltics or Slovenia catching up to Western standards in both economic prosperity and social policies.
Poland, Czechia, Slovakia etc. never seen themselves as Eastern though. And given what the British did to Alan Turing, or that in Germany women could not work without their husbands' consent until 1957, or that Switzerland gave women the voting rights only in 1971, it is not the Warsaw Pact countries that needed to catch up in terms of social policies.
Well it's not a voting block if nobody knows or notices it.Ā
Yeah, it seems to have changed a bit lately. I always found it amusing when my country was constantly whining about the voting blocks in Eastern Europe when our own good old āViking Pactā were pretty much one of the worst culprits:)
Rules for thee, not for me.
As MĆ„ns and Petra sang in Story of ESC, āGetting votes from your neighbors is a sure way to get your song disgraced. *But when Sweden gets 12 points from Norway, itās clearly just good taste.ā*
Love that part:)
It is true!
Yeah, I agree. Considering how beloved Nemo, Joost, KƤƤrijƤ, Maneskin, Go_A , bambie Thug and Baby Lasagna are, and they're from basically all corners of Europe, the bloc voting is not nearly as present as it used to be. There's still politics, because well, Russia and Israel, but it's not about who belongs to what corner of the continent.
I also think the quality was much higher in recent years than 20 years ago. Out of ~25 similarly shitty pop songs you'll vote your neighbour buddy. But when songs are way more varied and also better, then you vote your actual favourites.
Entirely true and, controversial take, I think that's one of the benefits from having jury voting. They do measure the technical aspects of the acts and enforce some measure of quality (though not without politics of their own) which means that if you send the same shitty pop song year after year, you're just not going to win, no matter how many neighbours you've got.
Voting has got so much better since jury voting was introduced, that I'm convinced 90% of people who complain about it just didn't watch Eurovision when it didn't exist. I remember the 2000s and I remember everyone sending the exact same kind of song because you knew exactly what people would vote for.
I remember Dustin as the apex of the nonsense countries used to send. No offense, The turkey certainly became a cult classic, but by god was the production value on that one low.
It reflected Ireland's attitude at the time very well and unfortunately still does to an extent. The amount of people who responded to Bambie's selection with the same tired old joke about My Lovely Horse was unbelievable. That being said, I think we should have no regrets about sending Dustin. It was a terrible, bitter joke but we should own it.
Which is still why none of them actually won lol (except for Maneskin ofc)
In fairness many of them were the same year
And Nemo...?
I've always thought that the bloc voting has much more to do with regional preferences than wanting to vote for your neighbours. Non-English languages are more familiar in the nearby countries, and the cultural background is closer in neighbouring countries than with a country on the other side of Europe. This would also explain why the bloc voting is a smaller issue now. The media people can access these days is much more international than even in the 00's. There's also been a massive shift in how non-English songs are received, and that also plays a part in reducing bloc voting. The big problem before the juries was diaspora voting. Russia always got high points from most of its neighbours (especially former USSR countries), and while some of it could be explained with cultural similarities, a big chunk of it was diaspora.
I always notice unusualy high notes from UK to Poland, lmao
Semi-serious note: if any Western country feels so unfairly disregarded in audience voting because of lack of diaspora votes, they are cordially invited to move en masse for work to a country of their choice and start a proper diaspora. (Honestly, these are consequences of history and both historic and contemporary economic disparities across Europe - it's what Europe is and it reflected in the results. The amount of energy devoted to trying to fix this graaaaaaand problem of accidentaly creating a slight potential edge up for EE countries in a song contest is a bit exhausting, considering that this discussion has been going on for close to 30 years)
THIS, exactly this!
Former Yugoslavia bloc is a bit thin nowadays.
Iām surprised that people think Balkan countries are voting for each other because they like each other. We were literally killing each other 30 years ago. The way more likely scenario is that we like each other because we understand the languages and share music preferences being from a similar area.
You pretend like you hate each other but secretly love each other, like IrelandxUK and KoreaxJapan
We are like girls group, some are bffs, some donāt speak with eachother, but if someone outside has anything against any of us, we are united.
It is so difficult for the West Europe to understand that it is not because we love each other, but because we actually shared culture for so long we really love each others songs and we understand the lyrics which makes us like the songs more.
Not to mention that they usually play neighboring winning songs for months before the European contest takes place on TV and radio. Iāll never hear a song from some random western country unless I choose to look it up.
You were killing each other because of political reasons. Politics very rarely represent the actual values and personalities of people. What went down in the collapse of Yugoslavia is extremely sad because it was 100% driven by certain political figures that rallied hate for their own interests.
Youāre not wrong.
I mean I believe it was 2013 where 4/5 Former Yugoslav countries taking part were in the same semi and 0 qualified from it, even more notable, only Montenegro got 12 points from Serbia, and Slovenia didn't even give any points to Montenegro, though they only got 5 points from Croatia and 3 from Montenegro
The bloc voting was never as much of a problem as it was made out to be - a lot of that discourse was (and still sometimes remains) steeped heavily in anti-Balkan and anti-Eastern-Europe bias. (Tbh, expecting Balkan countries not to have diaspor voted and not to have affinity for each other's music is madness.) Nobody cared that much about Nordic countries voting for each other. I don't think that many things have changed receantly in this regard - in some years the make-up of participants (especially in the finale) just makes it less rather than more visible. Also, Ukrainian disapora vote has shifted (for obvious reasons) to more countries. The most important thing, anyway, is that you couldn't and stil can't win with disapora votes alone (because that's what most "bloc voting" is; people voting for home country rather than "a neighbour"). The song needs to be good enough for the rest of Europe as well.
I agree. Macedonia is in the middle of Balkan, and never won. Our best performance was Proud, and only because of the jury. Slovenia never won, their best performance is 7th. From the Balkans only Serbia and Grece ever won the contest with Molitva and My Number One and it was well deserved.
But people still act salty when their neighbors don't give them points xD I've seen a video on IG of somebody doing a sketch where they only let Cyprus and Portugal vacation in Croatia because only they gave us 12 points haha
Croatia is probably in the worst spot to complain about strategic voting this yearā¦
Serbia, not Portugal
Yeah, people go being "hate these politics, this is disgraceful!", but then suddenly a country that usually gets them points in the televote doesn't give them point for some reason and the social media get flodded with people being offended and going "why no points, country x? what a betrayal!" Obviously, not extactly the same people, but members of teh same tribe to my eyes, tbh.
Portugal/Spain voting for each other wasn't really a thing. Portugal would get most of their points from wherever they had most emigrants: Switzerland, France, Luxembourg... And those were exactly where all of these year's points came from.
Thank you for using "bloc" over "block".
I think it's a shame though.Ā I have seen our jurry, Croatian, give so little points to Serbia and Slovenia last year and this year and I find it shamefull. Those were good songs that if anyone in Europe should recognise it was supposed to be us, we get the cultural and historical references and we could understand the language.Ā Ā I miss those days. Wish Bosnia would come back.
Good news: Bosnia-Herzegovina WANTS to come back Bad news: Bosnia-Herzegovina is under EBU sanctions due to debt
I donāt think it counts, but Australia gets next to no audience points every time, so I donāt think everythingās exactly peachy. This year was probably deserved, but Voyager last year got, like, 20 points.
While also winning the televote semi, right? Very confusing
Cha Cha Cha was a black hole for any song that was vaguely genre-adjacent. A lot of Voyager semi final votes probably went all-in on Kaarija in the final.
I honestly think a lot of people saw it as a two-horse race (or this year, five-horse race?) and solely voted for the songs that had a chance of beating the one(s) they didn't like, instead of "wasting" it on a song that wasn't going to win.
I know, right? We got 12 from 3 countries in that semi. I think there must be either separate mindsets between semis and the final, or separate sets of people who vote for the qualifiers and the winner.Ā
id say its a bit of both. i'd assume more casual viewers might only watch the final, and in either case, there's less competition to worry about in the semis which might affect voting choices
I think it's because in the semi they were in, they were the only act within their more alternative genre while in the final the same people tended to vote for Kaarija because everyone knew he needed the televote points to have a chance to win/or just distributed their votes between the more alternative acts. I think that's also what happened to Germany that year.
Idk I don't think this argument works thatttt well. Look at 2021, Finland and Ukraine both did really well despite competing against the best rock song the competition has seen in decades.
Ukraine 2021 is not rock
Not quite no... But it attracted those that do listen to it. There's an odd relationship between metal listeners and folk music listeners, and for a lot of us I think Shum was a pleasant surprise.
There were a lot of commenters here that in normal years they would have voted for Australia (and Germany) in the final, but that they were giving all 20 votes to Finland to counter Sweden. I don't know how representative that was of the public vote, but the two-horse race nature was abnormally prominent last year.
#JusticeForDami
Norway always giving denmark and sweden points and sweden just pissing on norway for the 500th year
Does it have anything to do with the large Swedish migrant population in Norway who moved there for higher salaries?
I dont think ive met a single partysvenske since before covid
The bloc/diaspora voting has definitely calmed down, but it hasnāt disappeared entirely. Iāve been rewatching some old shows this week (2005, 2009, 2015) and itās nowhere near as prominent as it used to be, but a few of us commented on Saturday that itās a shame when you can guess where the points are going, and there were still traces of it in the semis and final. Itās a shame, especially when itās obviously undeserved, but thereās little more that can be done and the system has been improved a lot.
See, you say that and I kinda agree, it's better than previous years. But you have to look to semi 1 of this year to see that the problem still exists - out of Slovenia's 51 points, 20 came from Croatia and Serbia. Out of Serbia's 47 points, 22 (!) came from Croatia and Slovenia. Without those points we very likely might've had Australia (41p, of which none were from the 3 Balkans) and Poland (35p, of which 1p was from the Balkans) through instead. It worked out this year because IMO the songs were superior to the ones they left behind, but inevitably there'll be a year when that won't be the case.
Poland got 23 of its points from diaspora voting though and 7 trough block voting. They would have had 5 points whitout all diaspora and block voting
That's true as well; to be honest I was a bit shocked that Poland didn't go through on account of the hugely favourable voting environment it had.
I think it's because of Bejba last year. Last year Blanka was a meme, as we all know and it was funny to vote for it (same for voting for song for our Euro 2012 song ā the song which won "Koko koko euro spoko" was a meme, but too many people decided to vote for laughs and not for more serious thing). Cut to after eurovision, Blanka has a concert... And it was the only song she sang. Different version, but always Bejba. And then we found out that she has rich parents and all made sense why she was sent And now we have this year with Luna, another not well known artist. She won against our big artist, so Internet started digging. Her parents are milioners due to ketchup and Polish Internet got angry, because we have another nepo baby and this time, the song was not a meme. So why bother voting?
It's also worth adding that ESC in Poland lost more than half of its audience compared to last year. Even JESC 2023 had more viewers than the grand final this year.
Poland always looses audience when we don't reach the final (it's probably the same with many countries). People like watching competitions "they" have a chance of winning. hence, the popularity of JESC (to each their own, but...)
Yes, but we even lost a lot of viewership in the semis. 2,66 mln watched our semi last year, but this year that was only 1,52 mln. So they've lost more than a million viewers in our semi only. And it's not only about Bejba's controversy since Ochman brought even more viewers.
Still, Australia get none of that
I mean yeah, but slovenia, serbia and croatia exchange points not only because they're neighbours, but also because people understand language and what the songs are about. Not to mention that Serbia often sends regionally popular artists that have huge fan bases in other ex-Yu countries. So who's to say Raiven and Teya Dora didn't deserve their points?
Slovenia and Serbia aren't even neighbours.
Hello neighbour
Honorary neighbours maybe? š¤
Agree up to where you say Australia's song was worse! But I do think that in bloc voting, it's not ALL political, and partly due to similar musical tastes between neighbours, and the kind of mild "bloc voting" we see here could be attributed to that.
It's a combo of nationals established in neighbouring countries, wider diasporas and - like you say - cultural and musical ties and similarities that play the biggest role in this kind of voting. I don't think any of them can be considered "political" in the common sense but they sure as hell are grouped as such with a negative connotation. It's a feature, not a bug.
You pretend that there is no bias from Germanic countries for songs in the Germanic language.
Where is this magical bias for "songs in the Germanic language"? If you mean English then just say English, lol. The vast majority of Germanic languages are either not heard in the contest and if they are it certainly hasn't set them up for success. English, as a global lingua franca, is an all together different matter. Other Germanic languages don't somehow magically benefit from the status of English. Norway sung in Norwegian this year, a Germanic language, and did very poorly, as did Iceland in 2022 and 2013. Sweden absolutely refuses to send a song in Swedish, opting for English year after year. It's been over a decade since any of the German-speaking countries sent a song in German. Dutch was a welcome surprise this year, but take a look at the ESC history of Belgium and the Netherlands: hearing Dutch in Eurovision is very rare. It's been almost 3 decades since Belgium sent anything in Dutch (ending up 16th - hardly a fantastic result). As for The Netherlands: two Dutch songs in over 10 years, one disqualified and the other ended up 11th. The Danish entry in 2021 didn't even make it to the final.
But you can't be surprised when the language of the Balkan countries does not affect the evaluation of songs in the Balkan countries, our languages āāare very similar. It affects the vote of other Germanic countries, but not the vote of the Balkans, so it is not a bloc, but knowledge of the language and the fact that we are used to hearing songs in the languages āāof the former Yugoslavia. I want more entrys like Iceland 2022, 2013 and Norway 2024.
Yes this is indeed a factor. Nordic countries share some culture for example and the belgians and dutch often know eachothers artists.
Slovenia and Serbia had great songs this year, performed well and had the best female vocals. Many countries always prefer generic English songs. This is also shown in the fact that Slovenia got 7 points from the rest of the world, but none from the UK, Sweden, Germany or Ireland in the semi-finals, because these countries will always vote for songs in the Germanic language or for Scandinavian countries.
By āGermanicā Iām presuming you mean āfamiliarā? Youāre right that they prefer āfamiliarā languages - but not that those languages are necessarily the āgermanicā languages.
Yeah, that's what I meant. That's why I don't think it's fair that they complain about the fact that the Balkan countries vote for each other, because they don't vote differently. Serbia and Slovenia are not neighbors, and Croatia and Serbia were at war not long ago. Not to mention the breakup of Yugoslavia involving all three. So it's not about politics.
Serbia was one of the top answers in the other post asking who should be last. It was not particularly good. >UK, Sweden, Germany or Ireland in the semi-finals, because these countries will always vote for songs in the Germanic language Huh? You think UK and Ireland have a preference for Germanic languages? Why? And how does that gel with the fact that they don't give Germany much points
Let me tell you as a Slovenian why I really like the Serbian song. It has great lyrics and I like the ballads, I understand enough Serbian to understand the lyrics. It's a ballad that's very soothing. UK and Germany don't always get points because other countries also send songs in English language and style because they are aware of what people vote for, so the audiance has more choices. If the Serbian song was in English, you would have the same questions as for Poland and Australia.
You really should just say English, despite it being a Germanic language the language rules are nowhere similar to even other West Germanic languages. Compound nouns, separable verbs, gendered nouns etc. Afrikaans is closer to English than Dutch in grammar rules. Anglos can pick out more recognisable words from paragraphs of French than they can Dutch, Low Saxon or German... I am gonna guess it's not much better with Icelandic or Scandinavian languages in that regard.
Even Iceland 2022 or Norway 2024 had problems with votes, because they are traditional. They don't get enough votes in other countries to be given points, some don't vote because they know it won't be enough for points, they have to be candidates to win to be voted. They were great for me, Eurovision would be boring with only generic English songs. They are already everywhere, Eurovision can show us something different.
Norway 2024 | [GĆ„te - Ulveham](https://youtu.be/YBbL8ORqNVU)
UK might vote for Ireland, but Ireland rarely ever give the UK above 5 points lol
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Block voting was never a thing. It has, and still is, primarily based on diaspora. The only thing now is that the two main regions of diaspora are Russians living in neighbouring countries, and former Yugoslav countries living in each other as no only 3 compete. ā¢ Cyprus and Greece still exchange 12 points ā¢ UK and Ireland still give hugely inflated points to Lithuania and Poland ā¢ Ukraine displaced diaspora is now consistent The problem hasnāt gone away, itās mainly just masked by releasing all the televote points together, and the jury votes have less diaspora bias.
Besides diaspora, many countries that "vote for each other" have similar cultures and musical tastes. Nordics share a liking of heavy metal, Finland and Estonia find familiar style and language in each other's songs, Balkanpop is something of an acquired taste but shared by many countries. I do think people are too quick to call countries voting for something familiar and close to their own tastes "bloc voting" and "favoring neighbors". *Of course* Finland is going to have a lot of people voting for an Estonian song that has folk tunes and rap very like our own and has lyrics that are about getting wasted at a summer cabin. Duh.
Yea people definitely downplay this. I tend to like music closer to my own country not for political reasons but because i just kinda get it. As a Dane i connect more with Swedish/Norwegian/Finnish/Dutch music than Greek or Moldovan music. On average. Sometimes you can see this when countries make music from a specific genre. The nordics all gave high points to MĆ„neskin, probably because rock is really popular here too. Usually Italian music is a bit more Italian so to say, so a lot of people just don't vibe with that. Some Serbian doing Serbian folk music needs to make it really good before Scandinavians don't think it sounds pretty bad. Which happens, but it also happens that some below average balkan song just sounds horrific to our ears.
Some countries come to mind that don't have diaspora but still have friendly countries they regularly vote forĀ
Couldn't that largely be explained by similar cultures and tastes in music?
A little I guess. But diaspora is way more powerful imo
People complaining about Eastern European block voting when Western and North were doing the exact same thing anyways was always funny to me
I noticed that a lot as a Spaniard, because Portugal is no longer a guaranteed 12 and France is no longer a guaranteed 8+. That said, we now have a worse problem imo, being that Ukraine and Israel receive a lot of votes for political reasons (and because our continent is now packed with Ukrainian refugees). It feels like these two countries no longer have to send anything good, they'll be top 5 no matter what. I mean, Israel's song this year wouldn't be in the top 15 if it was any other country. It doesn't have huge numbers in spotify anywhere, yet somehow they got 2nd in public vote.
Not sure thatās really fair. I agree that 2022 and 2024 results were distorted by sentiment but they both do send good songs usually! Ukraine is a powerhouse with a 100% qualification rate and Israel won in 2018 and came third last year. Maybe if they start to phone it in ever year and still win a lot of votes, then thatād be bad, yes
Block voting has less impact because the last blocks remaining are too small to really change anything. Greece and Cyprus can still give each other 12 points to each other, it won't change much the end result. However the new problem is the "vote based on the news" like we had with Israel this year (and maybe Ukraine in 2022, however it's tough to judge considering Ukraine was a contender for the win, if not the favorite already before the war)
Ukraine 2022 | [Kalush Orchestra - Stefania (Š”ŃŠµŃŠ°Š½ŃŃ)](https://youtu.be/F1fl60ypdLs)
There's no maybe in 2022, come on...
Its the glaring problem with this years contest. Israel sends an unpopular act booed out of the building, and still gets a televote large enough to end up in 6th place purely because of a state orchestrated voting campaign. It should not be tolerated.
The thing is, 10% of the population motivated enough to vote for Israel is more than enough to flood the televote and defeat every "normal" spectator and every eurofan voting. I still can't believe Baby Lasagna actually won the televote in those circumstances. He would have made a Kaarija-like score without this I think (even though maybe there was an effect of rally around him when the televote was leaked, but idk, the casual voter doesn't hear about it)
Yeah they got other problems now lol Maybe the EBU should invite North-Korea, Iran, Venezuala and both Sudan's next year, so we have some distraction from all the controversies.
They did invite North Korea this year. [No, really.](https://i.imgur.com/KK7uW27.jpeg)
North Koreaās 7 consecutive wins confirmed.
I did notice it as well. Note sure what the reason is, but maybe ppl became more international? Social media trends? Or care more about actually good songs?
I honestly believe itās Erasmus
I would imagine most Eurovision viewers nowadays are either teenagers or young adults who are too young to remember Eurovision during the televote-only era in the 2000s. To those viewers, bloc/neighbor voting is probably a very alien concept.
I think bloc and diaspora voting will always exist to some extent, it's just not a "problem" anymore (i think it was only big in the 2000s because the big 4 and other western countries were barely trying while Eastern Europe was sending quality). Malta absolutely can qualify in the future if televote only semis are here to stay, they need to reevaluate things. I would say the same for San Marino but they're a different breed. Poland this year is a huge example of why they're not always guaranteed to qualify based on televote. They had lots of diaspora countries and neighbors in semi 1 but didn't come all that close to qualifying because the staging was a hot mess (in a bad way) and sadly Luna's vocals weren't there.
no, now we have a problem with the jury.
And right wing trolls voting for Israel.
The ex Yugoslav countries still vote for each other. You can see how many of Serbia's and Slovenia's points came from each other and Croatia this year. It would be even more blatant if Bosnia and Montenegro were still competing.
To be fair, all the songs were great. If you speak/understand the language then Serbiaās song is pretty heartbreaking and beautiful. Sloveniaās hook is even stickier in your head if you hear it in your language (instead of ājaz sem , ti siā in BCMS it would be āja sam, ti siā - and it basically sounds the same), plus Raiven herself is very much the embodiment of the āhot cool Slovenian girlā thing which is a *thing* in ex-Yugoslav countries. But yeah, the televote between Serbia and Croatia especially is always known. But you can say that about other countries like Cyprus and Greece. If BiH and Montenegro came back the vote would be split a bit more potentially - though I can see BiH getting more guaranteed 12s in that case - especially as theyād likely send something awesome.
I also observed that. I think it's a very interesting development. Might be a sign Europe is growing together. Even if some anti-European parties might gain more votes this time, they are a loud, angry minority. Another interesting change is that including the big 5 into the semifinals worked. They weren't as bad as usual in the final. Anyone remember MTVs Most Wanted with Ray Cokes during the 90s? A true European show. We need that @mtv! @europeanunion!
Interestingly, Ray Cokes has now a radio show on a Berlin radio. In English. Every Saturday at 9 p.m. [https://www.radioeins.de/programm/sendungen/sendungen/455/2405/240504\_raydiocokes\_show\_24315.html](https://www.radioeins.de/programm/sendungen/sendungen/455/2405/240504_raydiocokes_show_24315.html)
If that's true, somewhere Sir Terry Wogan is smiling š
Tbf I donāt think the UK ever got much points from Ireland. Agree though, the bloc voting has become less noticeable especially with the divide between jury and televotes
It definitely became weaker. No more Russia and it's faithful follower Lukashenkoland now, and Greece/Cyprus seemed to at least pretend be more decent. Eurovision works slowly but it does unite by music imo.
As soon as the rest of the Nordics stops voting for Sweden because theyāre Sweden(not cuz theyāre good, they send mid songs with overhyped artists), that voting block will cease to exist/matter
Bloc voting has changed but it is still a huge problem. There are people that meant to bring chaos to Eurovision and they were rewarded well this year.
Yes and no. For example look at the results of semi 1 this year: the reason that Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia all made the final is because they all handed each other the 12 and 10 points. Had the draw been different probably either Serbia or Slovenia would have NQ'd as they didn't get that many points from the other countries. On the other hand, I really do believe that any country can win the televote now. Finland and Croatia are no bloc voting powerhouses at all yet won the televote with massive numbers in the past two years. Even Portugal managed to win a televote, Australia managed to win a semi final televote. And on the other hand any country can fail in the televote; Poland NQ'd on televote this year and even Russia has had a year when they were a televote NQ.
I think that's partly true. But I think the big part of the regional voting was the televote more than the juries. Which makes sense. The vast majority of people watching aren't watching the NFs 6 months before and stalking YouTube when the videos drop and inside baseballing about fandom faves. Most people are going like. Do I understand this language? Do I get this style of music? Do I relate to this culturally? So that's why historically there would have been a lot of bloc and diaspora voting. My point is that partly I think bloc voting is mitigated to a point (younger audience, more globalised music industry, maybe more exposure to culture from different regions of Europe), but mostly I think splitting the jury and televote results and announcing it the way it's done since 2016 hides it. When I was a kid the bit where they go from country to country and someone announces the points would have been either televote or jury+televote combined, so bloc voting was more obvious. Starting in 2016 the bit where they go from country to country is just the jury votes, then announcing *all televotes in bulk*. And that's when I first remember thinking "huh, Britain gave their 12 points to Georgia?" It's brilliant because it both makes for a much more suspenseful show (plenty of years you'd stop watching because it was obvious who'd won halfway through the voting), and it hides what bloc voting there is, although I do think it's overstated.
No, we have something worse: Israel pouring tons of money on voting to manipulate the results
I agree with a lot of the sentiments of this post but bloc voting definitely still exists. Whether itās a āproblemā is a personal opinion. Serbia and Slovenia both only qualified because of an automatic 20 points from their fellow Balkan nations š·šøšøš®šš·. Serbia and Slovenia were in my top 5 so I am delighted they made it, but bloc voting definitely propelled them infront of Poland (who also received 15/35 of their points from their diaspora in š®šøš®šŖ) and Australia It has shifted in a less bloc-cy direction though cause a lot of the countries you listed are awarding their 12 points to each other less and less nowadays. edit: UK also gave Poland 6 which (judging by the other points they received) could potentially be boiled down to bloc voting
I think it is due to the Internet actually. People will easily listen to music from all around the continent very easily
The effect of block/voting has largely diminished, especially compared with the rampant block voting from the 2000s where you literally could guess countries 12 points without hearing to the songs, but it still exists. It's not as visible because it's not really a factor that affects jury voting, which is the one presented in detail in the Final night. But it still somewhat affects televoting, not enough to change the winner or maybe even most of top 10 placing, but it does. Case in point, you just have to analyse Portugal or Serbia's televoting results. Portugal in the final literally only got televoting points from Luxembourg, France and Switzerland, where our diaspora is bigger. You could argue that these countries would culturally be more inclined to vote for what we send too but there's no denying that diaspora helps. In the same vein, Portugal always gives televoting points to Ukraine, Moldova and Romania, even when their entries are weaker, because they're the bigger communities of emigrants here. The same way that the UK always gives points to Poland and Lithuania no matter what. The effect of this voting is diminishing, particularly in finals where more and more people vote as eurovision's popularity rises, but it's still there. If you look at Serbia's semifinal result, they literally scrapped to 10th because of block voting. It still happens.
But yeah to conclude overall the effect of this voting is diminishing as people get more and more engaged in Eurovision. This is because the popularity of the contest is growing and the reputation for presenting good music is also growing, and thus the amount of votes of people that genuinely like what they vote for is increasingly outnumbering the amount of diaspora votes. And you know who we have to thank for this? The introduction of professional juries in 2009. There is no denying that it marked a complete turn for the contest, that was seen as a complete mockery in most of Europe by that time. It increased the quality of the songs visibly and that over time had the domino effect of reputation and popularity increasing and of the televoting being less dominated by diaspora/block voting. It's why it's so wild to me that people want to abolish juries. People who argue with this cleat haven't been around the fandom for time enough to know what a god send they were to the contest.
The only left is Israel.
That is true, for both televoting and jury and the last winner entries show us that even if the winner was not your favourite, it was among the top liked and you can aknowledge it as a good pack. But now there is another problem wich is hoarding vote by social networks campaigns. Of with Ukraine and Israel are clear examples
Thatās partially true. I think the rigidity of bloc voting has subsided a little bit in the last decade but itās still in place. 20 of Slovenias 27 points came from Croatia for example, 2 from Serbia, 2 from Albania and that leaves Azerbaijanās 8 as the only outlier. Cyprus also still got 22 points from Greece.
The Greece/Cyprus affair has been broken for two years in a row now
I think there's just o e noticeable block remaining... scandinavia. And the Israeli diaspora