Interesting post, but what I don't understand is what data is being used here? You vaguely mention foreign relations and
song quality somewhere in the middle, but you don't elaborate on any metrics or data source?
Eurovision is a summary of european geopolitics told through a limited form of communication called "voting". There's a bit of singing at the start, but that only slightly affects the voting bit.
The data source is the voting records since 1998. It's run through a parametric Bayesian MCMC model. The input data and the code for last year's model, which is pretty similar, are on GitHub: https://github.com/mewo2/eurovision
It actually fits it's own internal logic quite closely. Countries vote overwhelmingly on political grounds, with actual song quality coming in a distance second.
Yes, that's why Germany never wins. Or Finland. Or Israel.
So I'm a physicist too and let me tell you: Take these calculations with a grain of salt. It is very easy to underestimate the complexity of what actual people do.
Voting blocks exist and they do skew the results, but they are not strong enough to determine the winner alone, despite what many commentators in the third world of Eurovision (UK, Germany) think. So far, no song has won Eurovision without getting a lot of points from countries outside its alleged voting block. Other biases in the system are also present, such as an unfair advantage for western europeans due to the juries, and the four orders in magnitude difference between vote weight.
If you watch it (or make simulations on it) without the intention of just having some harmless fun, you're doing it wrong.
I don't think the voting blocks are political - they're cultural.
A song that gets played on the radio in Britain is likely to get a lot of airplay in Ireland, and the Irish vote will go to the familiar British artist. If someone's on Europa Plus in Moscow every hour, chances are the stations in Ukraine and Latvia and so on will also play them.
It's not down to "we really hate Britain, so let's all gang up and not vote for them," it's down to "we're familiar with the people who are celebrities in our own region of Europe." The Eurosceptic British media would like us to think the rest of Europe dislikes us, hence the "political voting," "let's just leave Eurovision" narrative that comes out in the press every May.
I cannot watch the voting for longer than 5 minutes without bellowing in outrage at how blatantly political the whole thing is. They could save time by dispensing with the music entirely and just asking everyone who their favourite countries are.
http://i.imgur.com/MoTQRRZ.jpg
My call: Ireland will place in the top-5.