The draws for the two semi-finals have taken place, and now the real work of predicting qualifiers and possible winners can now begin. As you’ll know, ten will make it through, so in reality each song has a better than average chance of making it. Only eight or nine will go home. But who do we think the likely qualifiers are?

In this post, we’ll look at the countries in the first semi-final. First, this is a table of the likelihood of qualifying, based on how the countries in each semi-final have voted for each other in previous semi-finals.

These countries would miss out.

Russia, Greece, and Azerbaijan have always qualified from a semi-final, so it’s fair to say we could be seeing them in the Saturday night Grand Final yet again. At the other end of the table, the Czech Republic has very little form to go on.

There is another way to look at this, and that’s not from the country point of view. Since the draw is seen as key, we’ve analysed where the top 10 has been performed in all of the first semi-finals. This might give us an indication of where the ‘sweet spots’ in the draw are. The higher the line, the more times a country has qualified from that part of the draw.

From this graph alone, the most likely qualifiers will be Greece, Netherlands, Armenia, San Marino, Russia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Malta.

The worst place using this form of prediction, in the first semi-final, , it would seem, is fourth to perform. This means that Hungary might be on a sticky wicket.

So, taking the two sets of predictions together, the smart money will probably be on the following countries:

Certain: Greece, Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Malta

Possible: Iceland, Hungary, Finland, Croatia, Netherlands, San Marino, Czech Rep, Estonia

Unlikely: Moldova, Cyprus, Austria, Montenegro

However, records are set to be broken, and it’ll be likely that at least one ‘unlikely’ will feature on the Saturday night.

Do you agree? Do you think any of the ‘certain’ qualifier will miss out?. Stay tuned for the Second Semi-final analysis soon.

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Author: John Stanton

Source: Eurovision Ireland