Mario van Tongeren from the Netherlands, who reported for ESC Covers over the Eurovision period, has written now about the difference between the jury voting and the public voting.

Saturday night running into Sunday morning, we saw the exciting Final of the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool and it of course interesting to see how the jury vote compares to the televoting.

Much has already been said about the top 2 entries, where Sweden won the jury vote by a very large margin, while Finland won the televoting by a large margin. However, there were also interesting results.

Australia did very well with the juries, obtaining 130 points, while only receiving 21 points from the televoting. It was always more of a jury song, but still I for one expected the difference to be smaller, especially as the won the second Semi-Final, which was 100% televoting. Austria, the runner up in the second Semi-Final, also ended up doing much better with the juries, receiving 104 jury points, while getting no more than 16 points out of the televoting.

Belgium received a whopping 155 points from the juries, and only 55 points from the televoting, while they were always deemed to have a much more televoting friendly entry this year, so this is quite a remarkable result. Croatia did live up to its expectation of doing well in the televoting, after getting 112 televoting points, versus only 11 points from the juries.

Estonia did surprisingly well with the juries, getting no less than 146 points from the juries, while only receiving 22 points from the televoting. Norway, on the other hand, did much better in the televoting, where they received 216 points, compared to the meager 52 points they received from the juries.

Spain managed to gather 95 points from the juries, but finished last in the televoting with only 5 points. This will be disappointing for Blanca Paloma, but is very understandable, as her loud Flamenco song was not very accessible to the general public. Ukraine obtained 189 points from the televoting, probably with a sympathy vote or two or three there, but received only 54 points from the juries.

We see quite a bit of differences, however, that is also why we have both a jury vote and a televote, to have different perspectives, to make sure the Eurovision winner is both popular with the public, and also considered good by music professionals. For that reason, my opinion in the debate that has sparked is that we should keep the system the way it is.