From Iceland — How Iceland Voted In Eurovision

How Iceland Voted In Eurovision

Published May 15, 2016

Andie Sophia Fontaine
Photo by
Vugarİbadov/Wikimedia Commons

We may not have made it to the finals, but Iceland still participated through some interesting voting.

Iceland once again did not make the cut to participate in the Eurovision finals, but the event is still hugely popular in this country, and many tuned in. RÚV reports that Iceland’s voting was quite diverged from the winning results, which put Australia at the top of the jury voting, while Ukraine captured the win through televotes.

Iceland gave its 12 points to Sweden, for the song If I Were Sorry by Frans, while giving 10 points to Poland through televoting. These results were somewhat unsurprising – Iceland tends to vote for Scandinavia countries, and Poles comprise the largest ethnic minority in Iceland. In fact, Poland received no votes from the Icelandic jury, giving 10 points instead to Australia.

This marks the first year Eurovision split voting between jury votes and televoting, with televoting having the final say. This may have contributed to Ukraine’s win, as many have pointed out Ukraine’s song, 1944, had lyrical content with many parallels to the Russian annexation of the Crimea.

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