In the Eurovision Song Contest, beloved and mocked for its kitschy music, voting, while seemingly tendentious, is the most important and engaging part.
But what are voting trends over time, and what external factors help explain them?
Ahead of Saturday's final in Basel, AFP analyzed all the scores that have been distributed since 1957 among some 2,3 possible pairs of voting and receiving countries.
Patterns emerged that pointed to a variety of factors, from geopolitics and cultural connections to a basic liking for good songs.
Good neighbors
The various European regional blocs participating in the competition – the Nordic countries, the former Yugoslavia, the former USSR, the Baltic states – show internal solidarity and distribute most of their points among themselves.
Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland gave Sweden more than a fifth of all the points it has received since 1958, when it first participated in the contest.
However, while the blocks show clear patterns, the differences indicate that other factors are at play.
For example, political tensions remain in the Balkans, "but cultural ties seem to be trumping political disagreements," Dean Vuletic, author of the 2019 book "Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest," told AFP.
"I would say it's because these countries share a common music industry," he said.
On the other hand, some countries stand out for having a very low number of points exchanged.
Azerbaijan and Armenia, which fought two wars over Nagorno-Karabakh, have exchanged only one point - which Armenia gifted to its neighbor in 2009.
Meanwhile, in Azerbaijan, 43 votes were registered for Armenia during the vote. The media reported at the time that all of these voters were interviewed. police.
One spectator who was accused of voting for Armenia explained that officials accused him of being unpatriotic and a potential threat to Azerbaijan's security.
The most loyal friends
Voting patterns also show that there are clear pairs of parties that vote for each other more than average.
A striking example is Cyprus and Greece, which have separated each other from more than eight points (when the maximum number of points was 1981, until 12) to more than 2015 points (when the maximum number is 18, since 24) above the average since 2016.
Romania and Moldova, not participating this year, are another pair of countries that have separated each other by more than nine to more than 2005 points above average since 12.
These trends are explained not only by the geographical location and language of neighboring countries, but also by the recognizability of the performers.
"They mix a lot," Nicholas Charron of the University of Gothenburg told AFP. "The collaboration between the countries is very close, in terms of songwriting, choreography, the professionals working in these countries."
Unrequited love
On the other hand, there are also examples of one-way voting, where a country awards more than average points to another country that does not respond in kind.
Among such cases is France, which awarded Israel more points than any other country.
It also votes heavily and unevenly for Portugal, in terms of television viewers alone - the average score for France fluctuated between three and nine.
Since 1997, both the jury and the audience have voted in each country at Eurovision.
From then until 2012, Germany voted noticeably more in favor of Turkey - an average of 10 points, compared to around 1,4 points previously, and the Turks did not show such friendliness.
This can be explained by labor laws and demographics. In 1961 and later, just under a million Turks came to work in Germany under the guest worker agreement, and over time a large diaspora developed.
The situation is similar with the scores that Albania and other Balkan countries receive from their migrants in wealthier Western European countries.
The one-sided French votes also seem to have been influenced by diaspora voices, as viewers were able to express their opinions through voting.
"I guess there are a lot of Portuguese living in France who vote for their country, and there are almost no French people who care about Portugal or who would vote for it," Charron said.
As for France's points for Israel, "it's certainly understandable because France has the largest Jewish community in Europe," said Florent Parmentier, a political scientist at the elite Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po).
The diaspora is also relevant for Lithuania: Ireland, the United Kingdom (UK) and Norway give Lithuanians disproportionately high scores, and in addition to the Baltic countries, Georgia also actively votes for Lithuania for political reasons. Ukraine.
Volatile voting
In individual years, prominent political events can also influence voting.
For example, in 2022, when Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, there was a significant increase in votes for Ukrainian representatives who won the contest.
Their victory was determined by the audience's votes.
Viewers from 28 out of 39 countries gave Ukraine the maximum number of points, while only five juries did so. Ukraine scored a record-breaking 439 viewer points out of a possible 468.
A victory of this magnitude could be an example of the impact of unpredictable factors, Farid Toubal of Paris-Dauphine University told AFP.
"The coming to power of a dictator or nationalist changes the dynamics in relation to (that country's) partners in Eurovision," he said.
In addition, following the attack by the Islamist group Hamas in 2023, historically large numbers of people from across Europe are voting for Israel, as well as from other countries around the world through a separate "Rest of the World" vote, so Israel is once again expected to place high in the audience vote in both the semi-final and the final.
Typically, commissions look less at politics, although voting for neighbors and friends persists to a lesser extent.
The voting of the committees often differs markedly from that of the audience: for example, the Latvian committee did not award Lithuania a single point in the 2024 final, while the audience gave it eight, the same applies to the UK.
