Tonight, the second semi final of the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest was held. 19 countries competed and ten of them moved forward to the grand final this Saturday, 16th May. Let's take a look at the results from a statistical point of view.

Here are the results again:

The qualifiers are: Azerbaijan Croatia Ukraine Lithuania Albania Moldova Denmark Estonia Norway Greece

The eliminated countries are: Ireland Latvia Serbia Poland Cyprus Slovakia Slovenia Hungary Netherlands

The winners

Two countries definitely maintain their status as successful countries in recent years: Ukraine and Greece will have appeared in every Eurovision Song Contest final since the introduction of the semi final stage after Saturday. Furthermore, Azerbaijan takes part for the second time and qualified for the second time while Croatia will be in the final for the fifth time in six years just like Norway; Moldova will be in the final for the fourth time in five participations. Even more happy might be Estonia: Having taken part every year since 2004, the country qualified for the final for the very first time in the years with semi finals. Therefore, Andorra remains the only country that took part in every semi final stage broadcast so far without ever qualifying. Albania and Denmark will be in the final for the fourth time since 2004 and Lithuania will be in the final for the third time in six years.

The losers

The Netherlands are probably the unluckiest country this year as they were eliminated after the semi final for the fifth year in a row. They are closely followed by Cyprus, who did not make it past the semi final for the fourth year running. Slovenia did not reach the final for the fifth time in six and Poland will not be in the final for the fourth time since 2004. Ireland, the country that has the most victories on its account, did not reach the final for the second year in a row and for the third time in the years with semi finals. Serbia has to suffer from the "curse of last year's host" and will not be in the final for the first time since their debut two years ago. Latvia will not be in the final for the first time since 2004, when they were the hosts of the previous year. Slovakia returned to the contest this year and has already announced to take part again next year, but was not lucky this year. It was the country's fourth participation having previously finished 19th in 1994, 18th in 1996 and 21st in 1998.

The running order

After the first semi final, we said it could be seen that the countries late in the running order did much better. In this second semi final it was even more obvious. Again, seven out of ten qualifiers were performed during the second half of the show. These seven songs were performed in a rown from number 12 to number 18 leaving out only the Netherlands, which performed last. On the other hand, the Croatian song, which was performed first, made the final.

Performers & Songs

In the first semi final, the female artists were far more successful than the male competitors as only one all-male act reached the final (and not a single male solo performer). Tonight for male soloists made it to the final compared to three female soloists. Those acts are joined by the all-female group from Estonia and the two mixed duos from Azerbaijan and Croatia. Half of the songs that qualified are up-tempo songs, the other five songs could be classified ballads or mid-tempo songs.

Predictions

The esctoday.com bigpoll predicted 8/10 countries right to qualify and few surprises could be seen in this semi final. The biggest surprise might be the qualification of Croatia as the country was not a hot favourite poll to qualify neither in the betting odds nor in various prediction polls. Slovakia and Slovenia were seen as likely to qualify by some bookmakers.

Geographical notes

The results are inverse compared to the first semi final: Seven of the ten qualifiers are usually considered "Eastern" in the statistics that mainly face on cultural rather than geographical aspects. If we take a look at the three most classic 'voting blocs' we can see that one out of three competing former Yugoslav countries made the final and that five out of six competing former USSR states made it. Both Nordic countries in this semi final qualified, which means that all five Nordic countries will meet each other in the final for the second year in a row.