This year’s Eurovision Song Contest is almost upon us.
A fixture of the British TV calendar, Eurovision is celebrated every spring with boozy house parties around the nation as friends and families gather to laugh at the preposterous costumes and crimes against hearing being cheerily enacted on the big stage.
With the show edging closer, you might want to brush up on the voting system, which was radically revised in 2016.
Each participating country has a professional jury whose job it is to rank its top 10 performances, awarding points of 12, 10, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two and one to its next favourites in descending order.
These scores will be revealed during the final by each nation’s spokespeople as usual, at which point a second round of votes from members of the public watching live at home will be cast.
These in turn will establish a parallel top 10 on the same basis.
The two sets of scores will then be added together to give a final set of results from that country.
Finally, these are added to the overall league table, meaning the final winner will not be revealed until the very end of the show when all 43 competing countries have submitted their scores, ensuring the tension remains high until the very last moment.
The maximum score a performer could therefore receive, if all 42 judging countries were to award them a 12 from both professional and public votes, would be 1008.
Those keen to rake over the ashes afterwards in pursuit of the answer to where it all went wrong will be able to examine an extensive breakdown of the results on the contest’s official website Eurovision.tv.
The revisions brought in in 2016 mean the spectacle of a country awarding ”nil points” to a rival – Eurovision’s signature diss – has been eradicated, a soothing thought for patriotic British viewers already bracing themselves for disappointment.
