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43 countries in two heats
[UPD] Semi final allocation draw analysis
You can find the results of the draw here.
It has to be mentioned that the analysis below is based on voting statistics of recent years. Of course, it is always impossible to really predict the outcome of a voting before the contest.
First overview
The following countries that traditionally give each other many votes and couples, where one country usually gets many points from the other, will NOT be in the same semi final:
- Turkey and the Netherlands
- Turkey and Belgium
- Germany and Turkey
- Cyprus and Greece
- Sweden and Norway
- Finland and Sweden
- Sweden and Estonia
- Estonia and Lithuania
- Estonia and Latvia
- Gerogia and Armenia
- Montenegro and Serbia
- Ireland and the United Kingdom
- Lithuania and Ireland
- Russia and Belarus
- Portugal and Spain
- Switzerland and Germany
- the United Kingdom and Greece
- Ukraine and Poland
The following countries that traditionally give each other many votes and couples, where one country usually gets many points from the other, will be in the same semi final:
- Moldova and Romania
- Romania and Spain
- Israel and Romania
- Romania and Ireland
- Latvia and Lithuania
- Finland and Norway
- Andorra and Spain
- Belgium and the Netherlands
- United Kingdom and Malta
- United Kingdom and Cyprus
- Albania and F.Y.R. Macedonia
- Latvia and Lithuania
- Croatia, F.Y.R. Macedonia and Serbia
- Bosnia & Herzegovina, Slovenia and Montenegro
- Iceland and Denmark
Detailed analysis
Scandinavia
Finland and Norway will take part in the first semi final, Sweden and Denmark in the second semi final which shows equal chances for all four countries (although Finland usually gives less points to the Scandinavian countries than the other three). On the other hand, Iceland, which usually gives many points to the Scandinavian countries, especially Denmark, is in the second semi final which might slightly raise the chances of Sweden and Denmark.
Former Yugoslavia
Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Slovenia will take part in the first semi final, Serbia, Croatia and F.Y.R. Macedonia will vote in the second one. Since Serbia is only voting and not participating, mathematically, the Croatian and F.Y.R. Macedonian chances are slightly higher to reach the final if Serbia follows the voting patterns of recent years (nevertheless, it is highly unlikely that this will affect the results at all).
Former USSR
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Estonia and Russia will be in the first semi final, Belarus, Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine in the second one - again a fair allocation. The most neigbourly friendly couples - Georgia & Armenia and Russia & Belarus have been split. Apart from that, Poland, a country usually giving top marks to Ukraine is not in the same semi final as Ukraine.
Czech Republic
Czech Republic scored only one point on their 2007 debut at the Eurovision Song Contest. Without neighbours Slovakia and nearby austria, it's hard to tell where their friendliest countries will come from. Their song this year is about having fun, and Poland seem to like 'party' songs. Unfortunately, Poland is in the other semi final and so is Estonia, the country that gave that one single point in 2007.
Switzerland
There may be a few more nerves in Switzerland after the draw today. After chosing an Italian language song, the only other remaining Italian speaking country, San Marino, was placed in the other semi final. Malta, however has a high percentage of Italian speakers and may vote for the Swiss song. Switzerland may also miss neighbours, Austria, who withdrew from the competition earlier this year after claiming that the results were too political. Serbia will miss their 12 points.
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Romania is one of the biggest benefied.
Diaspora votes from Spain
+
Neighbouring votes from Moldova
shine for romania!!! i will vote for you guys 100 times:X
everyone has their own reasons to vote. unfortunately, now it is mostly political ones. but even in this year situation votes wont go only for the song quality, there are many factors included. this is how human mind works. i thought i would never ever wote for Russia, and that is not good, becouse in this case i'm political. but that's just my country ,it's history which is too hard to forget. but now, one of my favorite songs in final of my country is played by russian man, well, he speaks lithuanian, but in general he is russian. so here you go, i'm improving. what i want to say is, that all countries interact, so there will never be objective voting, never. but that doesn't meen taht all votes go only for political reasons. of course, we all know that year after year same countries get high points from the same neighbours.. well, you decide. but in this stressfull situation we are living in now, it is normal to expect that it is not going to change soon.
Vodka d best 
Vote 4 Malta
This is a song contest not a damn neighbour contest grrr
Best wishes to all countries with the same problem.
Hasta la vista Slovenia.
We have absolutely o chances to get thrue semifinal.
we give every year a lot of points to Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (becouse of the migratons) and to Croatia becouse 40% slovenians go to their vacatons to Croatia, but we never get some points back.
So, maybe 10 points from FYRM and Bosnia together and that's it.
I'm not so sure if this system is such a great idea for small countries like us.
Khalid GR
i Agree with u 100% and IM pretty sure that Armenia wont give any points to Azer... I mean look what happened with Turkey, they gave 10, 12 to Armenia but never had anything in return..
Some people ask why Azerbaijan would give Bosnia - Herzegovina many points. The answer is the same with "Why does Turkey give Bosnia - Herzegovina many points?"
It's obvious that Azerbaijan will give 12 points to Russia, 10 points to Bosnia - Herzegovina, and no points to Armenia or Greece, that's for sure.
@ Erika Lansen - "But when i read all of the previous comments about countries that could be in trouble after "losing" partners in the votes, it's like admiting that most of the songs in the top 10 didn't deserve to be there. It only happened because they got lucky with the votes..."
Not necessarily - it's just that some countries who don't have a lot of neighbours who always give them points (almost automatically, like ex-yu and ex-soviet union countries) ARE more dependent on certain friendly countries, to be able to "fight" these automatic votes some countries get, even a little!! And if they lose that, well, not much hope for them then...
(This applies to e.g. scandinavian and baltic countries, who have just a couple of neighbours each who share their culture, even though people often wrongly accuse them of voting as a bloc... That's groundless.)
@ lina esc
Is it such a complicated thing to understand that the native population votes are spread among all countries and not concentrate on one? If 1000 native people would spread their votes among 20 countries, every country would get on an average 50 votes. Lets say that the favourite country X of the native population get 130 votes. Then there are 100 immigrants coming from the same country, they all vote for their home country Y. It would get 100 votes from them. Those 100 votes alone wouldn't mean that country Y get the most votes. But you can't forget that some people of the native population will vote for country Y, too because they like the song. So if the song is average liked by the native population it could perhaps get 50 votes from them which make together 150 votes for country Y. In this example country X wouldn't get 12 points which the native population would have given it because the votes of the immigrants are concentrated on country Y and NOT because the native population haven't voted at all.
That was only a mathematical example but something like this is happening very often.
I really like this new system. At least now all of the good songs have more or less the same chances.
But when i read all of the previous comments about countries that could be in trouble after "losing" partners in the votes, it's like admiting that most of the songs in the top 10 didn't deserve to be there. It only happened because they got lucky with the votes...
I trully hope that now the contest will gain a bit of its old glory and the voting proceedure will not be so see-through any more!
@ leo from cyprus?? lol CRAB???
UR SONG MUST BE A JELLY FISH....... TO UR STANDARD
@ Anthony Borowicz
"Turkey must send a really good song in order to qualify.. It'll need an average of 60 points to reach the final.. Counting on its diaspora 12pts from France.. 10 more from Switzerland and possibly 8 from Albania (The UK only gave them 12 last year).. Those are only 42 points.. Not enough at all to qualify."
Even if everything you have written here is right and will come true in the semi, Turkey would have a big head start. To get 18 points shouldn't be very hard with a half-decent song. Only 19 countries are participating in the semi (last year 28) and every country give points to 10 of them. If the other 17 countries would give Turkey only 1 point in average they would have 59 points.
For the final there should be 50% jury, 50% televote
@ Mario Mir
Romania didn't get ANY points from Germany in the final last year. The majority of Romanians migrate to south European countries like Spain.
And of course Turkey and Russia have lost more secure points than other countries. But this is no wonder because most countries didn't have so many secure points which they could possible loose. Nevertheless both countries still have some "friends" in their semi final and shouldn't have a problem to reach the final with a half-decent song.
The radio version of the song Follow Me-Vh2 (no.07 in the second romanian semifinal) was released on the 28th in a very popular tv show "Happy Hour" on PRO TV.
The version that you could listen till this date was only the demo presented by the group VH2 in the preselection contest. The final version is quite different.Listen to it. You wont regret it!
@ Mario Mir
Turkey has Albania, FYR Macedonia, Bulgaria, France, UK, Switzerland and probably Croatia and Georgia to give them points. I don't think they are unlucky at all.
Bosnia has the following countries to help them: Azerbaijan, Montenegro and Slovenia and don't forget that Finland and Norway will also give them points, due to the big diaspora who lives there.
Come on, people, do you seriously think that this system will change anything at all?
In my opinion, the most lucky are: Romania (has Spain, Moldova and Germany) , Armenia (has Netherlands, Russia, Spain and Belgium) and, as always, FYROM (has Serbia, Albania, Croatia and Bulgaria).
The most unlucky: Turkey (has lost the top scores from Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Azerbaidjan and Bosnia) and
Russia (has lost the top scores from Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia and Georgia).
Anyway, I think Russia could qualify easily thanks to Armenia, Azerbaidjan, Estonia and Moldova. Turkey could have more problems, because the only clear top scores would come from France and maybe UK or Bulgaria.
I think this new system has proved itself. It should be very hard for a mediocre song to qualify for the final.
That is unless all the songs are mediocre - which wouldn't be surprising to anyone who has watched the 1989 contest.
~~Moopy - ESC 2007 rerun~~
@Denis
"Good luck neighbours" - that's exactly the sort of sentiment that is ruining ESC and causing the need for this convoluted voting system.
It isn't about neighbours - it should be about songs. Well, at least your honest enough to admit why you vote for someone. Thats better than most.
Serbian votes in SF2
12 Croatia
10 Macedonia
GOOD LUCK NEIGBOURS
love this draw!!............
Estonia is in wrong semifinal.
Only country who always gives us points is Finland. And we are hoping for Norway too.
But Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden.. They are in other semi-final.
That soo sad. I was almost hoping that we have a chance to get to the final.
It's so weird how all six of the songs that we've heard in full have all been placed in the same semi-final!
I'm quite happy whith this. At least there are efforts to improve
you forgot Bulgaria and Greece! But anyway! I see many reactions on this site and other sites that many countries are in big trouble to be able to get the ticket to the finals now without their "neighbours and diaspora" ! That's half the truth i think but anyway.
I think its more exciting now! Anything can happen! But i still believe that some countries will be for sure in the finals! we will have to wait and see
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