🗳️ Full voting rules for Eurovision 2023 revealed

The EBU has today revealed the full voting rules for Eurovision 2023. These provide some clarity about the voting changes for the 2023 contest, including the qualifiers from each semi-final being decided by the televote only, and the addition of a Rest Of The World audience vote in both semi-finals and the grand final.

Many of the voting procedures remain the same as in previous years, but they can still provide an insight into how the competition will be decided, so let’s take a look at the highlights from this year’s rules!

A 50/50 split…ish

Ever since 2009, the results of the contest have been decided by a 50/50 split between national juries and a public televote.

This year, the split is a little less even. The introduction of a Rest Of The World televote, without a corresponding jury, means that the results are now weighted slightly in favour of the televote. The votes from the Rest Of The World will count as if they are one country. If we want to get suuuuuuper mathsy about it, the weighting is approximately 50.6% televote to 49.4% jury vote. In the grand final, we can break it down by numbers:

• The national juries will award a total of 2146 points
• The televote, including the Rest Of The World vote, will award a total of 2204

The EBU has not yet revealed the countries who will be eligible as part of the Rest Of The World vote. They will announce these in due course.

The impact of these changes can already be seen in some of the national selection processes. For example, Greece’s national selection included a jury from ERT and a panel of audience members, which was weighted in accordance with the new voting proportions.

The juries

50% of the votes from each competing country will be determined by a jury vote. A national jury is selected by the participating broadcaster, and comprises of 5 people, including a chairperson. According to the EBU guidelines, members of a jury should have “a solid musical/artistic background and relevant professional experience (with proven track record) that justifies their appointment.” This may include singers, musicians, choreographers, dancers, music critics, lyricists, composer, or other TV or radio professionals.

Each member of the jury ranks all competing songs in the show to which they are allocated. Their individual scores are then converted into a a score from 12 downwards, decreasing exponentially. These are then combined with the scores from the other members of the national jury, and the top 10 scores overall are then awarded the final points from that jury from 12-1.

The criteria given to the jury to rank each song by are:

• Composition and originality of the song
• Quality of the performance on stage
• Vocal capacity of the performer(s)
• Overall impression of the act

The semi-finals

As previously mentioned, a major change to this year’s contest is that the qualifiers from the semi-finals this year will be decided by the televote only. The national juries will create their rankings during the semi-finals, but these will only be used if the results of a national televote cannot be used, and an aggregate result cannot be created “which shall be calculated automatically on the basis of the results of a pre-selected group of countries.” Therefore, for countries such as San Marino, who cannot demonstrate a clear televote result due to their national phone system being linked with Italy’s, their votes will be determined first by using an aggregate result, and their jury votes will only be used in the semi-finals if this cannot happen.

Each participating country can vote in the semi-final in which they are taking part. As in previous years, the countries automatically given a place in the final will vote in one of the semi-finals. These were selected as part of the allocation draw in January.

• Semi-final one: France, Germany and Italy
• Semi-final two: Spain, Ukraine and the UK

Voting in the semi-finals will open once the last song has been performed, and will be open for approximately 15 minutes. After the votes have been counted, the countries with the 10 highest number of points will win a place in the grand final on 13th May.

The grand final

Aside from the addition of the Rest Of The World vote, the voting procedures for the grand final remain the same as in previous years. Voting will open once the final song has been performed, and will be open for approximately 40 minutes. The juries will vote based on the performances given at the Jury Final on Friday 12th May.

If a valid jury result cannot be produced, the results of the televote in that country will be doubled. If a valid televote cannot be produced, then the same aggregate rules from the semi-final will be used, with the jury vote doubled if this cannot happen.

In the event of a tie, after all points are distributed from the televote and jury vote, the winner shall be the song which has which has obtained the highest rank from all the televote, including the Rest Of The World vote.

How can the audience vote?

Another major change to the voting procedures this year involves the addition of a new method of voting! Eurovision audiences now have four ways of casting their vote in the contest:

• Telephone
• SMS
• Via the Eurovision App
• At www.esc.vote (voters from the Rest Of The World can only vote using this site)

(Not all of these methods may be available in every country – your broadcaster will share more details during the show!)

Depending on which method you use to vote, there may be a small charge, which may vary by country and service provider. Again, your national broadcast will be able to provide more details of this during the live shows.

What we know about Eurovision 2023

Although Ukraine won the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest in Turin, due to the ongoing Russian invasion they are unable to host the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest. Instead, the United Kingdom stepped in, as 2022’s runner-up; Liverpool will host the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest on the 9th, 11th, and 13th of May 2023. The contest will take place at the M&S Arena, with 37 countries taking part. The full production team behind the 2023 contest is listed here. The contest is a co-production between host broadcaster the BBC and last year’s winning broadcaster, Suspilne.

Alesha Dixon, Julia Sanina and Hannah Waddingham will host the semi-finals, with Graham Norton joining the presenting team for the grand final.

What do you make of the rules for Eurovision 2023? Who are you hoping to vote for? As always, let us know what you think by commenting below. Also, be sure to follow “That Eurovision Site” on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok as we prepare for Eurovision 2023!

News Source: Eurovision.tv

Photo Credit: Yara Nardi