“Eurovision Song Contest voting is primarily influenced by political and geographic bias rather than musical quality.”

Scholars at the Eurovisions International Conference 2025 will explore questions of fairness in the Eurovision Song Contest, examining whether it lives up to its claims of universality and inclusivity amidst ongoing geopolitical tensions. Topics include cultural memory, national identity, and the politics of fairness in Eurovision's structure and values, with researchers interrogating how factors like race, heritage, and regional identity challenge narratives of “authentic” national representation.

This study found clear evidence that the mere-exposure effect influences voting in the Eurovision Song Contest, with acts seen previously in a semifinal receiving more points. This effect, alongside previously studied factors such as cultural and geographical closeness, impacts how viewers vote, suggesting that factors beyond musical quality play a role.

Organizers of the Eurovision Song Contest announced plans to change the voting system to ensure fairness, following allegations of “interference” by Israel's government. The Dutch public broadcaster AVROTROS cited “proven interference by the Israeli government during the last edition of the Song Contest, with the event being used as a political instrument.”

The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is an annual event which attracts millions of viewers. There is a question of whether the countries will vote exclusively according to the artistic merit of the song, or if the vote will be a public signal of national support for another country. With 60 years of data, the results support the hypothesis of regional collusion and biases arising from proximity, culture and other irrelevant factors in regards to the music which that alone is intended to affect the judgment of the contest.

A data-driven model is proposed to address imbalances in semifinal qualification by incorporating voting history and running order effects into a fairness framework. The article notes that the current pot-based allocation system, which groups countries with historically similar voting patterns, successfully separates larger blocs but can inadvertently create new fairness concerns, reflecting persistent patterns in how countries awarded points to each other.

This paper critically analyzes the voting system applied in the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) 2024, noting that while the winner achieved the maximum sum of jury and public points, many argue about the fairness of the jury part of the voting system. It highlights that the ESC organizer, EBU, has recognized weak points of jury inclusion and constantly applied modifications, and that different biases influencing public voting have been analyzed by many authors.

The contest's new permanent slogan—“United by Music”—stands in stark contrast to a contest increasingly marked by division. In recent years, Eurovision has experienced withdrawals over ideological disagreements, public threats of boycotts, and, in some cases, the outright exclusion of countries. This outcome has raised questions about whether the final allocation of points genuinely reflected the artistic merit of the performances, or whether political considerations may have influenced the results.

Rather than fostering an inclusive pan-European community, the selective regulation of symbols narrows the space for artists to articulate pluralistic or alternative visions of Europe, revealing the limits of Eurovision's political neutrality. This friction between liberal and illiberal value systems continue to shape the contest's political landscape. Moreover, the restriction on artists displaying the EU flag, like the ban on pride flags, reveals Eurovision's increasingly cautious approach to political symbolism, even when such symbols claim to represent inclusion and shared identity.

Analysis of 45 editions of Eurovision reveals clear geographical voting patterns, with countries in the Caucasus and the Balkans benefiting most from political voting. However, the paper concludes that political voting rarely determines the overall result, and the best entry typically wins. Previous research also suggests that the quality of a song is decisive, despite the presence of clear preferences between countries.

Regarding the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) there are numerous controversies about discriminating and tactical voting. People vote for their neighbor countries and for countries with cultural similarities instead of evaluating simply the musical performance. These papers established empirical evidence for biased voting behavior, more precisely biases based on cultural and geographical closeness, ethnical and religious factors and linguistic affinity. While the most recent analyses empirically confirmed voting biases, they attributed the voting bias more to cultural-linguistic connections and geographical closeness between countries than to political issues.

A substantial list of cultural economics papers empirically analyzed the voting behavior of juries (consisting of music industry professionals) and audiences to identify voting biases because of cultural and political influences on the voting bodies. Interestingly, Haan et al. (2005) explore differences in voting behavior between public voting (via televoting) and expert voting (by juries), finding that expert juries are less biased than the audience although both groups are not unbiased.

This study, analyzing data from 1989–2012, suggests that voting in the Eurovision Song Contest is politically biased, with participants forming smaller regional voting blocs and being statistically likely to vote for their neighbors. While song popularity is also significant, the findings support claims of political voting and indicate that Eurovision voting patterns can be meaningful indicators of public opinion and inter-regional relations.

The Eurovision Song Contest's dual voting system, combining professional juries and public televoting, is susceptible to noise and bias in both methods. Public televoting can be swayed by factors beyond musical performance, such as visual elements, familiarity biases, and political influences.

It has long been alleged that the Eurovision Song Contest is less a talent show and more a measure of countries' geopolitical standing with others. The new research – published in the Journal of International Business Studies - looks in detail at voting patterns between 1999, when public voting began, and 2013 to establish that patterns of voting bias do exist.

This paper argues that Eurovision serves as a cultural platform for mediating international and social politics, with nations tending to vote in geographical/cultural blocs to make apparent alliances or grievances. Despite politics being officially banned, the complete separation of culture and politics is impossible, and cultural performances often carry indirect and explicit political messages, influencing voting patterns.

While analyses of voting results reveal clear geographical voting patterns linked to cultural, religious, political, and ethnic ties, political voting rarely determines the overall result of the Eurovision Song Contest. The paper suggests that 'music first' is often the deciding factor.

Eurovision voting each year reflects soft power moves – and interesting voting blocs that mirror political alliances and conflicts. Countries accuse each other of participating in voting blocs. Cyprus, for instance, gave Greece the maximum 12 points 26 of the 31 times they had the opportunity to do so.

Unsurprisingly, we have some differences between the jury votes and the public vote. The top 5 countries who had the biggest points gap between the jury and the public (much higher in the jury than the public) are: Switzerland: 365 points from the jury, 226 points from the public – a difference of 139 points; Portugal: 139 points from the jury, 13 points from the public – a difference of 126 points. The top 5 countries who had the biggest points gap between the jury and the public (much higher in the public than the jury) are: Israel: 323 points from the public, 52 points from the jury – a difference of 271 points; Ukraine: 307 points from the public, 146 points from the jury – a difference of 161 points.

The jury system at Eurovision has been questioned, with a noticeable disparity between jury and televote rankings, particularly from 2015 to 2025 where they disagreed on the winner seven out of eight times. Juries have consistently given lower scores to 'fun' entries compared to televoters, while boosting 'serious' entries.