Predicting the Eurovision 2014 winner with social media

Good evening, Copenhagen; MintTwist calling!

Eurovision 2014 is days away! Thanks to Emmelie de Forest’s win last year with Only Teardrops, we’ll be heading to Denmark for the live final on Saturday 10th May. With her win, Denmark became the only country to have multiple Eurovision wins during the 21st century.

This will be the third year we’ve done this analysis and last year was a success – we correctly predicted Denmark would win and Azerbaijan would come second. We also recently predicted the winners of the Oscars’ acting awards with social media.

Our social media predictions have placed the top 3 as Armenia, Austria and Sweden but do you have any favourites for this year’s Song Contest? Who do you think will win and how do your predictions match up against ours?

Without further ado, let’s take a look at this year’s Eurovision social media predictions!

Points System

For the analysis, we use a point system similar to the Eurovision Song Contest point system – entrants are awarded points of 12, 10 and 8-1 based on how they rank for a particular social media metrics.

Things to note:

• The Google search string used the syntax of: “artist name” + “song title”
• When there are artists performing together, we took the data from the most popular social media profile
• The analysis does not take into account additional influencing factors such as the language of the song (you’re more like to win with an English language song), block voting and social media popularity in different European countries

The social media metrics

The metrics this year include the following:

• Number of YouTube plays for the official video on
  the official Eurovision channel
• Number of YouTube likes for the official video
• Google search results indexed
• Twitter followers
• Facebook likes
• Facebook conversations
• Growth in social media following
• Global fan votes and polls

12 points go to…

Now everyone’s favourite part of the Eurovision Song Contest – the voting ranking results!

Eurovision – Most Twitter followers

Italy’s entrant, Emma Marrone, has a significant following on Twitter – almost 100,000 more followers than her nearest rival, Romania’s Paula Seling. Emma is extremely popular in Italy – having won the television talent show Amici di Maria De Filippi. She has three number 1 albums and 4 number 1 singles in Italy – but will her national popularity translate into points with the Eurovision crowd?

Eurovision – Most Facebook likes

Emma has 65% of the top 10’s total Facebook likes – in fact, she has more than 1,000,000 more Facebook likes than the 37 other entrants put together.

Rounding out the top ten we can see favourites Armenia, Sweden and Austria in positions 8, 9 and 10 – picking up some valuable points to help them claim Eurovision gold.

In previous years we have seen Facebook popularity not translate into Eurovision votes (Turkey in 2012 and Germany in 2013).

Facebook likes growth

However, when we look at who has managed to grow their Facebook likes the most, there is a significantly different top 10. Perennial favourites, Azerbaijan, have grown their Facebook likes by nearly 250%. Indeed, Azerbaijan have always finished in the top 5 since 2009 but after the controversy last year, I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t rank so highly this year.

Eurovision – Most Facebook conversations

Again, we can see Italy’s Emma riding high with a staggering 186,967 Facebook conversations – far ahead of her nearest rival, the hot favourite Aram MP3. The second favourite, Sweden’s Sanna Nielsen, comes 4th with 25,814 conversations.

Eurovision – Most Google search results

The UK’s Molly has the most indexed search results – granted there might be a bias here due to the way Google localised searches work.

Nonetheless, both Sweden and Armenia make the top 5 with Sanna winning marginally. Could this be a sign of things to come on the night and could Sweden win just two years since winning with Loreen’s Euphoria?

Eurovision – Most YouTube likes

Armenia looks to be the runaway success of this year’s competition. Aram MP3’s dub-stepped infused slice of Europop has by far the most YouTube views and likes. In fact, Aram MP3 has 47% more YouTube views and 179% more YouTube likes than Emmelie de Forest had when we carried out the research last year – and she was not the runaway success that had been predicted.

This might be the final nail in the coffin of the predictions this year – Armenia’s entry may already be far too dominate for anyone to catch up.

It is also worth noting that Sweden, the much touted dark horse of the competition, lags behind considerably. Even when we look at how Sanna’s growth has been on YouTube she hasn’t made up nearly enough ground or gained views quick enough.

Ruth Lorenzo’s Spanish entry could be their highest result in over a decade.

Armenia predicted to win Eurovision!

After compiling all of the data metrics and running them through our algorithm, Armenia is the run away favourite. Aram MP3 has been an early favourite since his song was first debuted and it doesn’t look like there will be any last minute hitches.

Armenia	Aram MP3	Not Alone	82 points
Austria	Conchita Wurst	Rise Like a Phoenix	62 points
Sweden	Sanna Nielsen	Undo	48 points
United Kingdom	Molly	Children of the Universe	42 points
Hungary	András Kállay-Saunders	Running	36 points

Aram MP3 could be the first Armenia entrant to win the Eurovision Song Contest since their debut in 2006 (the previous highest was coming 4th in 2008).

However, this time last year, it looked like Emmelie de Forest was going to walk it but she won by a margin of less than 50 points and failed to receive the most douze points on the night.

Sweden comes 3rd in our predictions but I wouldn’t be surprised if Sanna will go head to head with Aram MP3 on the night. Undo is Not Alone’s nearest rival in many respects and the Eurovision fans have already put their full backing behind Sweden – Sanna has every chance of winning the competition on the night and I wouldn’t be surprised if she finished second or even snatched the crown.

Austria is ranked second and is the only song approaching anything like Aram MP3’s score. However, Austria’s entrant, the hirsute Conchita Wurst, will undoubtedly divide fans. Indeed, he may have over 2.5 million YouTube views but he also has the most dislikes by far.

It’s hard to imagine but Eurovision has matured since the kitschness of its formative years or the camp-fest I enjoyed during the 90s. We will undoubtedly get bonkers entrants but more often than not, the songs that do the best are also the best pop songs. If the Eurovision audience can put aside any prejudice, the Austrian entrant is actually one of the best ballads this year with all manner of nods to Bond… Its high-ranking and Bond-esque production makes it deserved.

Missing out on a top-3 position is the United Kingdom’s very own Molly! Potentially this could be our best entrant since Jade Ewen and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber reached the dizzy heights of number 5 in 2009. It’s hard to remember that we came so high in the not so distant past, what with all the nil point and last positions we’ve received in the last decade. Children of the Universe certainly has all the markings of a modern Eurovision Song Contest winner – a catchy chorus and anthemic qualities have been a hallmark of recent wins.

Of course, anything could happen on the night and if someone’s earpiece fails to work then they might not be able to sing in key and no number of costume changes will be able to save you then.

If all goes to plan, expect Armenia and Sweden to duke it out for douze points. Also watch out for the United Kingdom and Spain to potentially do well – Molly and Ruth Lorenzo should both do enough to see both nations’ Eurovision pride recover a little.