Tonight, the first semi final of the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest was held. 18 countries competed and 10 of them moved forward to the grand final this Saturday. Let's take a look at the results from a statistical point of view.

Here are the results again:

The qualifiers are:	The eliminated countries are:
Turkey Sweden Israel Portugal Malta Finland Bosnia & Herzegovina Romania Armenia Iceland	Montenegro Czech Republic Belgium Belarus Andorra Switzerland Bulgaria FYR Maceodnia

The winners

Some countries maintain their successful string of results in the contest: Turkey, Sweden, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Romania will have appeared in every Eurovision Song Contest final since the introduction of the semi final stage after Saturday. Furthermore, Armenia will have appeared in every finalsince its first participation in 2006. Portugal and Iceland will appear in the final for the second year in a row after a series of eliminations in previous semi finals. Malta is back in the final after a last place in 2006 and two eliminations in 2007 and 2008 with the artists who brought the country a second place in 2005. Israel and Finland had mixed results in recent years but have reached the final this year.

The losers

Andorra has not reached the final yet again. If Estonia qualifies on Thrusday, Andorra will remain the only country that took part in every semi final stage broadcast so far without ever qualifying. Montengro and the Czech Republic both took part for the third time and did not qualify for the third time. Belarus did not reach the final for the fifth time in six years while Bulgaria was eliminated for the fourth time in five years. Belgium did not reach the final for the fifth year in a row and FYR Macedonia did not proceed for the second time having previously qualified through all of the first four semi finals between 2004 and 2007.

The running order

Once again it is shown that songs that are late in the running order do generally better in the Eurovision Song Contest. Half of the ten songs that qualified were the last five presented on stage. Seven of the ten songs were presented in the second half of the running order. The earliest song that managed to qualify was the Swedish entry at number five, closely followed by Armenia at number six. However, it has to be mentioned that many songs that were late in the running order were widely predicted to reach the final even before the draw was established. Something similar happened in last year's first semi final that saw many late songs qualify while in the second semi final, the opposite was the case.

Performers & Songs

The female singers were far more successful than their male collegues in this semi final. Five of the ten qualifiers are female soloists and they are joined by two female duos and the Portuguese group, who has female lead singer. The only all-male act that made the final are Regina from Bosnia & Herzegovina. Half of the songs are ballads and half of the songs are up-tempo, which predicts a broad variety of entries for Saturday's final.

Predictions

As announced, the ten songs that made the final are the ten that were predicted to qualify in the esctoday.com poll. It is the first time that ten out of ten were predicted right. Non-qualifiers that might come as a surprise for some people are Switzerland and Montenegro, which were tipped to qualify in some betting odds revealed. Montengro was even seen in the top ten of the overall Eurovision Song Contest by some bookmakers.

Geographical note

Despite100% televoting, Eastern Europe did not dominate this semi final, which is often claimed. Seven of the ten qualifiers are usually considered "Western" in the statistics. The three most "classic" voting blocs showed different results: Only one out of three former Yugoslav countries made the final and one out of two former USSR countries qualified. On the other hand, all three Nordic countries in this semi final (Finland, Sweden, Iceland) reached the final.