Six national juries were removed from Eurovision 2022 after “irregular voting patterns” were detected.
Votes from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and San Marino were all replaced with a new aggregated score, which was based on countries with similar voting patterns in both the second semi-final and the grand final.
The European Broadcasting Union said in a statement: “In the analysis of jury voting by the European Broadcasting Union’s (EBU) pan-European voting partner after the Second Dress Rehearsal of the Second Semi-Final of the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest, certain irregular voting patterns were identified in the results of six countries.”
“In order to comply with the Contest’s Voting Instructions, the EBU worked with its voting partner to calculate a substitute aggregated result for each country concerned for both the Second-Semi Final and the Grand Final (calculated based on the results of other countries with similar voting records). This process was acknowledged by the Independent Voting Monitor.”
“The EBU takes any suspected attempts to manipulate the voting at the Eurovision Song Contest extremely seriously and has the right to remove such votes in accordance with the Official Voting Instructions, irrespective of whether or not such votes are likely to influence the results and/or outcome of the voting.”
After 24 countries performed at the grand final, Ukraine’s entry Kalush Orchestra was announced as the winner with their song ‘Stefania’.
The group is made up of founder and rapper Oleh Psiuk, multi-instrumentalist Ihor Didenchuk, and dancer Vlad Kurochka.
They went up against Czech Republic, Romania, Portugal, Finland, Switzerland, France, Norway, Armenia, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Lithuania, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Greece, Iceland, Moldova, Sweden, Australia, United Kingdom, Poland, Serbia and Estonia in Saturday night’s final.
