The Eurovision Song Contest 2008 is over and as always after the final, the complete results are available. Let�s take a closer look at the outcome of the grand final.
- You can find the analysis of the first semi final here.
- You can find the analysis of the second semi final here.
- You can find the "What if…?" analysis here.
- You can find the scoreboard on eurovision.tv here.
Quick stats
Placings
- Russia won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time having competed eleven times before.
- For the eighth year in a row, a country won the contest that had never won it before.
- The United Kingdom finished last for the second time in the history of the contest (the other time being in 2003). If the tie-break rule were not taken into account, Germany would have finished last for the sixth time and the fourth time on a shared last place. Poland would have finished last for the first time.
- The following countries achieved their best placing so far: Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan (as a debutant) and Georgia.
- The following countries have achieve their worst placing so far: Poland, Croatia and Serbia.
- For the fifth time in the history of the contest, the top three songs were all performed entirely in English (this had previously happened in 1992, 2000, 2002 and 2005; in 2001 this almost happened but the Greek entry was partly performed in Greek).
- For the second year in a row, a ballad won the contest.
- Dima Bilan is the first male soloist to win the contest since Toto Cutugno in 1990 and Believe is the seventh winning song by a male soloist (the ninth winning song, if the Israeli performance of 1978 is not seen as a group performance).
Points
- No country got points from all other countries. Russia and Greece got points from the highest number of countries: 36 of 42 each. All countries got points from at least two other countries.
- Dima Bilan scored 272 points. That is the third highest score in the history of the Eurovision Song Contest.
- Armenia, which only finished 4th, is the country that scored 12 points the most times: eight times. Russia scored 12 only seven times, Greece six times and Ukraine even only once.
- 17 countries, which means almost 70% of the competing 25 received at least one set of 12 points.
- Russia scored an average of 6.48 points. The record of the highest average score is kept by the Brotherhood of Man who won for the United Kingdom in 1976 with an average of 9.65.
- Russia won with 42 points ahead of the entry from Ukraine. This is the second biggest winning margin since the semi final was introduced in 2004. Curiously enough, the biggest winning margin in this era was in 2006 when Dima Bilan finished 44 points behind Lordi from Finland.
- Both in the semi final and in the final, the United Kingdom gave no points to the winning song.
The running order
Nothing has changed when it comes to the running order: the top three songs have all been performed in the second half although four songs from the first half reached the top ten (but only one song the top five: the Armenian entry). After a top five finish for Israel in the first semi final, the #2 was no lucky number for the United Kingdom and brought the country a last place. #3 Was not successful either: Albania finished 17th. Only one of the last six songs performed and only two of the last eight songs performed finished outside the top ten.
Friendly neighbours and diaspora voting
Five countries did not award any points to Russia, all of them from Western Europe: Iceland, United Kingdom, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden and San Marino. Two countries gave only one point to Russia, those were also from Western Europe: the Netherlands and France. The story continues with the only 3 points Russia got which came from Belgium (Russia never scored two). On the other hand, five of Russia’s six sets of 12 points came from former USSR countries. Another 12 came from Israel, a country with a strong Russian diaspora. Other countries that might have profited by diaspora voting are Turkey (10 points from Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium) and Armenia (12 points from France, Belgium and the Netherlands) to name two examples. However, these statistics are always pretty unsure as nobody knows who votes for which country.
Five of the six former Yugoslav countries gave their twelve points each other, only F.Y.R. Macedonia gave its top mark to their neighbours from Albania. The Nordic countries also sticked together: Norway got its 12 points from Finland and Sweden, Finland got 14 of its 38 points from Iceland, Norway and Sweden (but no points from Denmark). Although Charlotte Perrelli’s highest vote came from Malta, the second, third and fourth highest marks came from Denmark, Norway and Finland. Iceland got its only 12 points from Denmark.
