ON MAY 10th Copenhagen will host the final of the Eurovision Song Contest, an annual festival of cheesy pop that was started in 1956 by the European Broadcasting Network as a way of linking the continent’s television networks, technically and culturally. The event has propelled some winners to the A-list, including Abba (Sweden, 1974) and Celine Dion (Switzerland, 1988); brought Irish dancing to a global audience (Riverdance debuted as an interval act in 1994) and produced memorable moments (Britons of a certain age will recall the “skirt rip” of Bucks Fizz in 1981). But sometimes it seems to divide participants more than unite them. In 2008 Sir Terry Wogan, who had provided commentary for the BBC’s broadcast since 1980, said he would be stepping down because he didn’t want to be “presiding over another debacle” (that year Britain came last). “The voting used to be about the songs,” he said. “Now it’s about national prejudices.” Is Eurovision really a stitch-up? Under Eurovision’s rules, each country awards points to its favourite songs as determined by a combination of telephone voting and an expert panel. Both have been accused of voting according to national bias. But according to a recent analysis by statisticians at two English institutions, Imperial College and University College London, the reality is not so simple. After examining votes for the past two decades, they concluded that musical prowess is indeed “unlikely to be the only element that wins scores”. But they found that voting patterns were driven not by animosity, but by positive ties between nations, such as proximity and cultural similarities. “Our analysis found no convincing evidence of negative bias or discrimination against anyone—no country really has any enemies,” said one of the researchers, Gianluca Baio of UCL.

Turkey seems to be scored highly by German voters, the researchers noted, “possibly due to the large number of Turkish people who have migrated to Germany, and potentially tele-vote from there.” Among the other patterns they found were that Cyprus and Albania routinely favour Greece, again probably because of migration, and that Britain has a steady fan base in the form of Ireland, Italy and Malta. Overall, votes tended to break up into four blocks: one made up of Austria, Switzerland and the former Yugoslav states; one covering central and southern Europe; and a bigger group containing the former Soviet states, Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia, which usually breaks more or less randomly into two. But, according to Mr Baio, “the patterns we observe are relatively weak.”

Sometimes the contest can highlight Europe’s broad social divisions, regardless of who wins. This year’s Austrian entry, Conchita Wurst, a drag artist with flowing black locks and a luxuriant matching beard, sparked demands in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia for her to be banned or, at the very least, for local state broadcasters not to transmit her song. “The popular international competition that our children will be watching has become a hotbed of sodomy at the initiation of the European liberals,” read the Russian petition. Meanwhile gays across the continent’s more liberal East planned parties to celebrate the kitsch aesthetic of what PinkNews, a Europe-wide news website, has taken to calling the “gay World Cup”.

Dig deeper:

Want to win Eurovision? Best to sing in English (May 2013)

Azerbaijan should not be allowed to host Eurovision, however camp its president's moustache may be (May 2012)

Musically, Britain is Europhile and France is Europhobe (May 2005)