Since the semi-final gave the result that no Western European country qualified, several media have been accusing the East European countries of voting for each other, but according to Svante Stockselius this is actually wrong as the biggest problem with neighbour voting takes place in Scandinavia!
In an interview with Swedish aftonbladet.se Svante says: "Yes, it is true that neighbouring countries seem to vote for each other, but this is mostly seen in Scandinavia. This is the region where it is most obvious".The Scandinavians wonder though as the actual semi final voting tells a different story.Denmark awarded Norway with 7 points while Norway returned 4 points to Denmark. The third Scandinavian country, Sweden, gave 6 points to Norway and 4 points to Denmark. In the final, where Sweden was the only Scandinavian countrycompeting, Denmark and Norway did indeed both award Sweden with the maximum 12 points,butthey claim this is no different to Cyprus giving 12 points to Greece and Serbia getting 12 points from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovenia.
It is also worth noticing that DR, the Danish broadcaster, after the result of the semi-final on their website encouraged all the Danes to vote for Sweden in the final.
In the semi-final Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Latvia and United Kingdom all awarded Denmark with higher points than Norway and Sweden did. Denmark finished 19th with 45 points while Norway got 3 more points and finished 18th out of 28 participating countries.
In the interview with Aftonbladet.se Svante Stockselius also denies that juries would have led to another result: "We have a jury group in each country as a back up if technical problems should occur. When we previously compared their result to the public voting we see that the voting from the jury matches with the televoting".