After a few discrepancies in the results of recent years the European Broadcating Union (EBU – the people behind Eurovision) have decided to go for a shake-up in the scoring this year – and they’ve made a handy video to explain it to us;

Basically each country now gets two lots of points to hand out, one set from the juries and another from the public vote. However this second set of points will not be announced country by country but collectively to each song. So if one song gets enough votes to earn 1 point from 12 countries, 2 points from 3 countries and 5 points from another country they will have earned a total of 23 extra points (12×1 + 3×2 + 1×5) and will be awarded all of these in one go.

So what will the new voting system bring to the show?

1) It’s still going to take a long time

Yes the voting is a major part of the show, but with 42 countries competing this year and now an extra round of points to give out, it’s going to be a loooong night.

2) It should make it more dramatic

As you can see from the clip above, the Swedish selection process has been employing a similar system for years and often it comes right down to the final result to decide a winner. (You can get a better feel for the new process by viewing the source video – Swedish only – here.)

3) Geopolitics will still exist but it will be less obvious

One of the big changes, assuming juries really do vote only on song merit, will be the lack of obvious geofavouritism on show. Yes, the public of one country might still give 12 points to their favourite neighbour but because this will be announced as a combined result with the televoting from all the other countries, it won’t be as easy to spot who’s doing what until the full breakdown is provided after the show.

4) The semi- finals still won’t give anything away

Although the semi-finals will also be using the new voting system, the results will still be announced in no particular order with no indication on who got how many points or from where, as you can see in this video from last year.

5) People are still going to complain

Some things never change and people complaining about the voting system is one of them. Expect cries of “It’s too long”, “it’s unfair” or “my eurovisionr was robbed!” just as much (if not more) than normal.

So now you know just how your vote will be used, make sure you pick the right song and see who deserves your points on our homepage!