SVT have made available a very detailed accounting of how the public voted during all rounds of this year’s Melodifestivalen.
There was a new way of voting this year that took into account the age of the voter. The public was divided into seven different age groups if voting on the SVT app. Votes cast by phone were put into an eighth group. Each group allocated points like a typical international jury based on the number of votes for each contestant. This could potentially remove some bias where certain age groups of the population vote with more frequency than others and therefore have a disproportionate amount of influence over the final result.
Now that we have the data, what can we learn from the new way of awarding points versus if the old system had been maintained?
We combed through the data and found some interesting observations:
Deltävling 1
- Anna Beregendahl did great with the older demographic, even finishing first in 3 of the groups. However, by scoring very low with the youngest voters she did not qualify direct for the final
- Mohombi qualified for the final despite not winning any age group
- Wiktoria was the overall vote total winner, with every age group placing her either first or second
Deltävling 2
- Andreas Johnson and Vlad had the largest swing between groups. Some groups placed them as high as second, while others as low as fifth
- Malou did great across the board, but was perfectly correlated with age – scoring best with the youngest and least with the oldest
- Hanna Ferm & LIAMOO were the overall vote winners scoring first or second with every group and received the highest amount of votes in any of the semi-finals
Deltävling 3
- Although Dolly Style did not qualify, voters aged 3-9 placed them first!
- Rebecca Karlson narrowly scored more votes than Lina Hedlund but because of how the points were awarded by age group, was sent to Andre Chasen
- This was the tightest semi-final with Rebecca, Lina and Jon Henrik all being very close to each other with overall votes, less so with the corresponding points – but still close.
Deltävling 4
- Jon Lundvik and Bishara were actually pretty close with the voting totals and only 2 points separated them from 1st and 2nd with Jon being the victor.
- Lisa Ajax and Arvingana were able to get as high as second place with at least 1 group.
Andre Chasen
- All battle winners were quite clear with a convincing victory in vote totals. Rebecca’s battle is the one that had the most disagreement with two age groups favoring her rather than Arvingana
Final
- All age groups would have chosen Jon to win with the exception of the two youngest who preferred Bishara.
Aside from the interesting insights, fans can rest assure only one qualifier would have been different if this new technique had not been introduced – Rebecka Karlsson would have qualified direct to the final over Lina Hedlund.