Of all of the recent suggested changes to the voting system, one of the most frequently heard concerns allowing only finalist countries to vote in the final, rather than every participating country. However, looking at this year's result, it appears that little would have changed without the votes of Albania, Belgium, and the other countries which failed to make it through the semifinal.
With only the 24 finalists voting, the biggest cause for celebration is for Turkey, at Ireland's expense; Sibel would have pipped Brian Kennedy into the qualifying ten by a single point. At the other end of the scale, Malta would have been spared the shame of last place alone – Spain joins the island nation on nil points without the semifinalist countries' votes. The United Kingdom and Moldova would have moved up marginally, above the worsened fortunes of Denmark and Latvia, while Israel and France exchange places and move up a single placing.
The full table looks like this:
1 193 Finland
2 162 Russia
3 145 Bosnia & Herzegovina
4 122 Romania
5 100 Sweden
6 91 Lithuania
7 85 Ukraine
8 79 Armenia
9 72 Greece
10 61 Turkey
11 60 Ireland
12 33 FYR Macedonia
13 32 Croatia
14 30 Norway
15 27 Germany
16 20 Switzerland
17 19 Moldova
18 19 UK
19 19 Latvia
20 17 Denmark
21 4 Israel
22 2 France
23= 0 Spain
23= 0 Malta
Would the voting have been more exciting? The scores are, on the whole, a lot closer; although Finland still beats runner-up Russia by a 31-point margin, the lower places – especially those of the lower 2007 qualifiers – are more of a battleground. A top ten placing for the host nation, Greece, may even have appeared in doubt during the vote above.
The fact that the top five all appear in the same order, and the rest of the table is extremely similar to the actual result, suggest that despite making the show longer, the inclusion of non-finalists in the voting does not skew the outcome of the vote in any significant way.
Thanks to esctoday.com's Barry Viniker for the figures! Have you spotted any other interesting facts or figures about the 2006 result?
