Now that the Belgian entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2023 is known, we focus in this piece on the distribution of points. What stood out and what stood out? And how could the result have looked different, with even a different winner?
We first return to the basics of the voting system. A total of 1,560 points were awarded, 780 by the fifteen-member professional jury and the same number by the viewers at home. The judges each gave 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 and 12 points to their top seven. The public could (not) vote via VRT MAX and SMS, with only one vote per person being counted per platform. The 780 public points were distributed in percentage terms. That means that if a candidate received ten percent of all votes, that was converted to ten percent of 780 or 78 points. In the event of an ex aequo between the two juries, the preference of the expert jury prevails. Below, for the sake of completeness, we give the full, official results of the final of Eurosong 2023 mee.
| # | Attendees) | Number | Jury | Audience | Total | Place |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hunter Falls | Ooh La La | 84 | 44 | 128 | 7 |
| 2 | Cherine | I don’t mind | 145 | 123 | 267 | 4 |
| 3 | The Starlings | Rollercoaster | 94 | 183 | 277 | 2 |
| 4 | Ameerah | The Carnival | 107 | 64 | 171 | 5 |
| 5 | Gustaf | Because of You | 121 | 157 | 278 | 1 |
| 6 | darling gala | don’t worry | 146 | 125 | 271 | 3 |
| 7 | Loredana | You Lift Me Up | 83 | 84 | 167 | 6 |
The jury vote
We start with the points of the professional jury. VRT entrusted Songfestival.be that the breakdown of points per jury member will most likely not be released, so we can’t go into that. But what do the total points tell us?
The voting system means that each candidate received at least 60 points, as each judge gave each song at least 4 and there were 15 in total. The maximum score, if each judge had awarded the same song 12 points, was 180. With 83, 84 and 94 points respectively, Loredana, Hunter Falls and The Starlings ended up at the bottom of the jury vote, so they mainly received lower points. Ameerah and Gustaph formed an intermediate group with 107 and 121. In the corridors we noticed that especially the final winner Gustaph took care of the divisionwith several judges placing him (almost) completely at the bottom or at the top.
There was more consensus about Chérine and gala dragot. The two French songs in the final of Eurosong 2023 both received average scores of just under ten points per jury member, making them the clear favorites of the jury. gala eventually won the jury vote by one point – the same marginal lead that Gustaph eventually took with a whopping photo finish as first over the Eurosongline drew.
The public vote
The way the televoting points were calculated and announced allows us to see how many percent each candidate got on his, her or their name. With 5.64% of the vote, Hunter Falls came in bottom, followed by 8.21% for Ameerah and 10.77% for Loredana, despite the robot carrying the message SMS 7. After that, the ratios increase. The two favorites of the jury, It bores me van Cherine don’t worry of gala dragot, were very close to each other and received 15.77 and 16.03 percent of the audience points respectively. And that leaves the top two. Winner Gustaph got with Because of You 20.13%, but The Starlings took almost a quarter of the audience points, with exactly 23.46%. Striking detail: since the introduction of televoting in the final of Eurosong in 1999, it is the very first time ever that the favorite of the Flemish public did not win the preselection.
We can compare with the result of Eurosong 2014, when there were six candidates in the final and the audience points were calculated in the same way as a percentage. The differences were a lot bigger then. Axel Hirsoux, who would later finish 14th in his semifinal at the Eurovision Song Contest in Copenhagen, was then awarded with Mother mno less than 57.14% of all votes. In 2023, there was therefore much more division among the Flemish viewer about who exactly should represent Belgium at the Eurovision Song Contest.
What if?
Finally: it obviously doesn’t change the official result and the winner, but what if the results were calculated in a different way? We look at two ways.
What if the jury and the televoters simply gave 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 and 12 points each and added them together? In dat geval had gala dragot Eurosong 2023 won, with 20 points in total: 12 from the jury and 8 from the televoting. The tie rule described above would have given Gustaph silver and The Starlings bronze, both with 18 points. Gustaph with 8 from the judges and 10 from the public and The Starlings with 6 and 12 points respectively. Chérine would also finish fourth here, with 17 points (10 + 7). Ameerah, Loredana and Hunter Falls would maintain their fifth, sixth and seventh spots in the standings with 12, 10 and 9 total points.
What if the televoting points had simply increased fifteenfold? This also happened earlier in Eurosong 2016, with ten international juries awarding 6, 7, 8, 10 and 12 points each but giving the public 60, 70, 80, 100 and 120 points. In the case of 2023, that would amount to 60, 75, 90, 105, 120, 150 and 180 points. In that case, The Starlings Eurosong 2023 won, by 274 points. Even then the vote would have been unusually exciting, because Gustaph had had 271 in total, with his second place in the televoting earning 150 points. The rest of the result would remain unchanged.
