Predictor Jury 2025 Results

The first edition of Predictor Jury has come to a close! All the results from our 70 Jurors have been revealed over on the socials and now it’s time to break them down and provide a few further stats. Here you’ll find the results of the 4 broad groups who took part in this where I’ve focused some time as well as the overall results.

Reminder that the short version of the instructions for this was for responders to vote as they would at Eurovision, following very similar criteria. Feel free to skip to the posted results lower but I’ll first set out some of the

Limitations

I’ll pre-emptitively point out some of the flaws with our process this year - some of which are unavoidable and inherent to any pre contest polling.

Most responding and taking part is more "in the bubble" and Eurovision keen than the actual juries will be. A call up from Predictor Jury or a fan site won't get the non Eurovision circle involved like the BBC, Rai or France Televisions can in May. Our strong Estonian contingent - enlisted with many thanks to our well connected friend Villu Veedla- are the furthest removed with their ESC acheivements the highlights to us internationals but generally outside that bubble day to day.

Echo chamber potential. Similar to the above many of those enlisted come from similar circles - with even that very strong Estonian jury all coming from one country where tastes may not be reflective of the entirety of Europe. For the fandom involved, I do think there's healthy respectful disagreement on many of the songs but some level of group think is unavoidable. I’d say anyone of the jurors voting from these groups have lived with these entries for weeks or months now, rather than on a first/second viewing which is more the case at ESC.

We are judging final product live performances (e.g Sweden, Finland) vs promised/likely changes (e.g. France, Denamrk, San Marino, Germany) and video clips (e.g. Austria, Netherlands, Israel). Obviously more volatility and less accuracy because of this.
Some countries are greatly overepresented here in terms of jurors contributing (mainly Denmark, Estonia The UK and The Netherlands). Bear in mind that there may be some level of bias in the 'with own countries' scores particularly for these but that they also lack the chances to score as many points in the "without own countries score''. Consider this when weighing them up in particular. I’ve provided some points per juror stats that should help a little balance this out.

Bear these in mind in order to make the best readings of the result.

My votes.

Putting yourself in the jury mindset, it is still difficult to seperate "objective" from personal opinion, in fact there is a lot of overlap between my two top 10s, which I think is the case for most. Human nature is to think that you do like the better entries and the reasons I might not personally like a song will overlap with how strong I think the composition is. It's quite a populist jury vote from me with Sweden, Estonia and Albania still featuring although they are all marked down a little vs my personal ranking.

The Results in full

Full Results from our 70 Jurors **Without** own country voting:

Full Results from our 70 Jurors **With** own country voting:

‘Other’ Voters - basically anyone who didn’t fit neatly into one category- 8 Voters

Selected Analysis

Starting at the top, Sweden's victory here is not only about scoring power but also consistency. They are the victor with 3/4 voting groups and a strong 3rd with the betting folk who are slightly less charmed by KAJ. Austria finish second overall and again it is the betting people dragging JJ down with him placing 6th there- a distant way from the top 3. France and The Netherlands are pretty neck and neck but overall Claude comes out of this slightly better from the pair I would say- he is lagging on fan support but France has somewhat underperformed in my view here and his points per juror score is not far off Austria .

In that h2h between Finland and Malta the former relies on a big vote from the fan group vs the latter. The UK has proven a really volatile one, receiving 0 from the betting people, 27th from others and fans but a top ten with our past NF acts. Make of that what you will. Spain was something of a surprise to see do well with them too.

Albania and Germany can be pleased overall with their results even if they are relying on the fans and betting folk too. Switzerland have a more consistent good result for them but not a game changing one without breaking into the top 4/5. Israel and Estonia are also about par I would say at that -”can break into the top 4 but not win” sort of level, assuming both have strong televoting.

Notable underperformances? Serbia coming last- with a performance already good and unlikely to improve- suggests a complete blanking in the final except for regional votes. Belgium have done absolutely nothing of note -certainly not for a country so high in the odds currently and it’s also bad news for Cyprus - there’s been plenty of chat lately about them but this suggests a low starting point. You might have seen me tweet about Greece ending in the bottom 5 recently and their result here influenced that slightly. Italy is something real juries will like more, but still, this isn’t a great result for them either.

Final Thoughts

There's nothing crazy here. Do I think Sweden will win the real jury?- no. Probability says at least one of France, Austria or The Netherlands who are all close enough here will bring a good staging where ‘serious’ jurors will almost inevitably gravitate. But I’ve seen plenty both here (and everywhere else) to say they will be in the top 3 or 4, surpassing 200pts and with the televote “certainty” with them are clearly the one to beat.

On the whole, it’s a very believable jury result list imo with perhaps that KAJ victory being the hardest thing to actually see (10-20% chance?), and I say that as a Sweden backer.

The results do probably reflect community sentiment too much, but we can only judge afterwards how accurate this ends up being and you can be sure there’ll be a follow up post mortem argument. There are occasional years where everything does go boradly as expected at this stage and this may be one of those- not long to see.

Overall, I’d say we received 95%+ honest and earnest scores that were given in the spirit of what we were aiming for.

As for next year- we’ll see what happens with this- I know the real ringleaders behind this @CDbjerg and Gert Jan Waterink are dreaming big but we’ll evaluate where to go- whether this remains “necessary”, how to keep it differentiated and how to develop the accuracy further. Feedback is welcome @PredictorJury on X but please bear in mind this was a last minute, debut project. To all jurors who took part, thank you for your votes- in particular to the busy music professionals who got involved.