Melodifestivalen 2012: Analysis and Reactions

Last night Melodifestivalen was on. Despite the fairly vast amount of criticism of the final this year, very few people actually put their money where their mouth was and watch Romania. 

So what happened? Well, all songs were performed and voted on. Loreen won with her great song Euphoria. So let's take a look at how Sweden voted and what the pattern might tell us about Melodifestivalen.

Songs and Success

While the winner of Melodifestivalen was pretty much certain and Danny came in second as expected. However the next few placings were surprising. David and Ulrik tied for third place. They were a bit ahead of where they were expected to be. The big surprise in my view was the poor showing by Molly Sanden and Lisa Miskovsky. 

How does Sweden vote?

Sweden use the same method to calculate the winner as Denmark. Juries around Europe award points to their favourite songs using a standard set of points (1,2,4,6,8,10,12). This means that one jury will award 1+2+4+6+8+10+12= 43 points. Eleven Juries award 11 x 43 = 473 points. The Public then award their own set of points 473 points. This is broken down based on the percentage of televotes it receives. So a song that gets 10% of the televotes gets 10% x 473 = 47.3 points. This then rounded to the nearest whole number.

This method was used last year but last year the juries did not have a clear winner. (Sanna, Eric and Danny were within five points of one another.) However as Eric was the winner of the televoting by a good margin (8.8%) he received 42 points more than Danny. 

Voting Patterns 

An interesting pattern emerged in the televoting. The table shows how much of the televote the top two songs took. The table beside them shows the top two in last years scoring. The top two this year took an unprecedented amount of the votes.

As a result of the 55% taken by Loreen and Danny there was a lot less votes than last year to share out among the others. This lead to the jury having much more say in the outcome of the 3rd-10th place rankings. For example Molly Sandén came second last on the televote but yet had a good margin in the jury vote. Despite a 5th place from the juries she came 5th overall. 

How did the juries vote in percentage terms? Well we converted the jury vote i.e. expressed it as a percentage of 473 points. Comparing it with the public percentages with jury percentages also helps to understand how voting worked. N.B. - Series 1 is jury votes, series 2 is public votes. (I'm not an amzing Excel wizard, sorry).

The other notable thing is that Loreen won the contest with a record number of votes in absolute terms. She pulled in a massive 670,551 votes which according to this SVT article is a record. The article is well worth a read.

Reactions

Eurovision fans are broadly happy with Swedens result and there is widespread recognition of Loreen as an exceptional artist even if she was not everyone's favourite. A number of older fans think that this is a bad choice for Sweden comparing Loreen with Kati Wolf last year who did well on fan polls but came 22nd in the final. I think people who argue that may be slightly out of touch with Eurovision Music - but that's just an opinion. However: Let the record show I believed on the 11th March 2012 I believed that Loreen was the most likely to win the Eurovision Song Contest 2012

In Sweden the fact that Loreen won seems to be rather popular but there is a couple of juicy stories from Melodifestivalen for those of us who like to take a peak at the Daily Mail.

Bjorn Ranelid has stated that only one Swedish writer wished him good luck in Melodifestivalen. Bjorn states that he now knows who his friends are and that Swedish writers have show their true colours (That's pretty cold - Ed.)

Danny has decided to be a sore loser and ran from the "green room/space" before Loreen could do a reprise. He also didn't take part in the after parties. He just went home to his girlfriends house. Today he said that Sweden had made a bad decision to send a schlager entry with Loreen. (And sorry Danny could you clarify What was your song then?) Anyway a couple of artists in Sweden have come out to say that they feel sorry for him and that they understand how much he wanted it. We just think that the better song won. Hard Lucj Danny. Well Done Loreen.

And Finally....

Of all the surprising things to come Melodifestivalen the amazing Sarah Dawn Finer Lynda Woodruff went down a storm with fans (while also poking the Brits, which we welcome.) Huge well done to Sarah for her hilarious piece.