Voting

The current voting format for the show from has been in place since 1975, countries award a set of points from 1 to 8 then 10 and 12 being awarded to the favourite song. From 1998 onwards all countries were encouraged to use public phone voting and text messaging, countries may not vote for their own countries songs. From Eurovision 2006 to speed up the voting process which used to have an announcement of every single point, the points from 1 to 7 were flashed on the screen immediately and the presenters only called out the points for 8, 10 and 12 individually.

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Political Voting

Over the years the show has become more and more political in its voting, some countries notably those that have emerged from the former Soviet Union tend to vote for each other. However the other side for the argument is that all these neighbouring countries all have similar languages and musical tastes and therefore their songs would appeal more to them.

At a meeting of the EBU in September 2007 it was agreed that from Eurovision 2008 there will be two semi finals to stop block voting between countries, i.e. Greece cannot vote for Cyprus and the United Kingdom cannot vote for Ireland.