Three charts on the joy of Eurovision

Using data visualisation to take a closer look at voting patterns, strategic voting and LGBTQ rights in Eurovision countries

Due to the sheer volume of statistics that it spits out each year, Eurovision is a dream come true for creating data visualisation — especially for superfans like myself and Joao.

In anticipation of tonight’s final, we’ve looked at which nations have chosen the winner the most times; who are Europe’s best friends in terms of voting; and whether gay-friendly countries are actually the bigger fans?

Which country ‘chooses’ the winner?

What this doesn't tell us if they have a good taste in music…

Despite not securing a win for decades, it is the UK that has given its maximum points to the contest’s winner the most times — doing this 11 times within the past 20 years of contests. So the UK can at least hold some pride in this regard.

The top points awarded by Andorra and Azerbaijan have never gone to the winner, but it is Romania that belongs at the bottom of this list because it has participated in more contests.

What are the stand-out voting relationships in Europe?

If it were a human relationship, Malta should probably dump Italy for neglect

The fun of Eurovision does not end after the performances, the tense and overtly political voting that goes on into the late hours is just as fascinating in my view.

Looking at data from the past ten years, we were not surprised to see many pairing of ‘best friends’ across Europe between neighbours which exchange a large number of points to eachother. Romania and Moldova top this, awarding 97 and 106 points to each other.

More interestingly we also found many unequal voting relationships where one partner gives many more points to their larger neighbour without receiving many points in return. This could be because the music is simply better or because the smaller country doesn’t reach the finals in order to receive points. But it is fun to imagine the disappointment from the unlucky nation within the couple.

What is the relationship between Eurovision fans and gay rights?

More disinterest where gay rights are worse, with highest viewing figures in the gay-friendly Nordic countries

Eurovision, with famous acts like Conchita Wurst and Dana International, has been embraced by the LGBTQ community. It is often known as the Gay Superbowl, but is this really reflected in it’s viewership? These maps show a correlation between the most gay friendly countries and highest viewing figures of Eurovision.

But Europe is not as progressive as we tend to think, as the pink map below shows with Central Europe and the eastern fringes harbouring LGBTQ discrimination and human rights violations. Russia and Azerbaijian will not be a surprise, but also countries like Italy and Switzerland lack in their LGBTQ rights.

We also analysed the results of the past twenty years to create a map to show where the most successful countries are in Europe. We did this by calculating the average rank that a country achieves in the final.

Here the picture is much more mixed. The most successful countries are split between those with both gay-friendly laws and avid Eurovision viewers (the Nordics) and those with both poor gay rights and TV viewing figures (such as Turkey, Russia and Italy).

Note Australia is shown in these maps because they are in Eurovision too — but that’s another story!

How we created our data viz?

We downloaded the data from datagraver.com, rainbow-europe.org and oneurope.co.uk. We then used React to crunch the data and to create the core parts of the two voting charts. We then used the vector graphics editor, Sketch, to make the design fixes. With the map we used datawrapper.de to create it and ezgif.com to animate it as a GIF.

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Oliver Carrington