The Eurovision Song Contest: voting rules, biases and rationality

Abstract

We analyze and evaluate the rules and results at the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest. We first concentrate on the various voting procedures and explore several alternatives (inspired by classical contributions in social choice and game theory) that could make a difference for the results. We also discuss other important issues, such as simplicity, contrast effects and whether experts are better judges than tele-voters. Our findings raise the question of whether the voting procedures used by the Eurovision Song Contest authorities are fail-safe. We endorse instead the use of the so-called Shapley voting procedure for judges as well as tele-voters.