How does televote on Eurovision work and why did Israel receive so many points?

Nemo Mettler, representing Switzerland, was crowned the winner of the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest, which was held in Malmö, Sweden on Saturday. His performance of ‘The Code,’ took an early lead in the voting and ended up gaining the lion’s share of the jury’s votes with 365. At the other end of the scale was the United Kingdom’s Olly Alexander, whose sensual rendition of Dizzy, set in a communal shower accompanied by four, bare-chested male dancers just didn’t cut it either with the panels of industry pros or the public - zero points from the juries and 46 from viewers texting in from their homes.

Israel gets the public vote

It was a similar story for Israel’s representative, Eden Golan who sang Hurricane - it went down a storm with those watching the contest on television but was largely snubbed by the 22 juries. With a score of 323, only Croatia gained more of the public’s votes. But Golan slipped down the ranking after receiving just 52 votes from the juries to finish in fifth place.

Much of this year’s Eurovision, the 68th edition of the contest, was overshadowed by the escalating conflict in Gaza which has horrified the world. Thousands of protesters descended on Malmö calling for Israel to be boycotted from the event and accused the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) of double standards, seeing that Russia was banned from Eurovision 2022 for its invasion of Ukraine.

Back in March, two of Israel proposed songs were refused by the EBU for their political content. Organizers insisted that the lyrics to October Rain, which made references to the victims of 7 October attack by Hamas should be changed. The song included the lines: “There’s no air left to breathe / There is no place for me” and “They were all good children, each one of them“.

Hurricane, Israel’s entry, was one of three songs which received over 300 points from the public - however it wasn’t enough to topple Swiss singer Nemo. That’s because the public vote only counts for half of the total vote with the other 50 percent coming from the votes of 22 different juries made up of industry professionals.

So why did Israel finish fifth? Let’s take you through the voting process for Eurovision.

How does voting work at the Eurovision Song Contest?

Each of the 22 juries awards points to their 10 favorite songs, with a maximum of 12 points going to their top choice, 10 to their second choice, then in descending order: 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 for their next eight choices. Each jury submits their result to the EBU and its official voting partner Digame via a highly secured system, as well as by fax. The juries vote make up 50 percent of the overall totals.

The general public can submit their vote in three ways: in the traditional way by a phone call, SMS or by logging onto the Eurovision’s official app. Relevant phone numbers are displayed on screen by each participating television broadcaster as well as on www.esc.vote. Each individual vote costs 0.99 euros (including VAT or equivalent sales tax).

Using the same scale, viewers can award a maximum of 24 points to a single act and each viewer can vote up to a maximum of 20 times. The semi-finals are 100% determined by the televote of each participating nation, including the non-participating Rest Of The World vote. The entire televoting process is monitored live by a team of trained professionals in the Voting Control Centre in Cologne, Germany.

The entire procedure is overlooked by independent observers of E&Y and by the EBU’s Executive Supervisor, to assure that all results are being interpreted in accordance with the competition rules.

Interestingly, none of the national juries gave the maximum 12 points to Eden Golan. However, Israel won the popular vote in 15 countries, including the UK, France, Germany and ‘Rest of the world’ - more than any other contestant. Croatia won the popular vote of nine nations and only viewers in Ukraine awarded Switzerland’s Nemo the maximum 12 points.