After the marathon of the 39 videos and blog posts for my top 39 countdown, I suddenly found the first semi-final almost upon us and my customary preview/predictions post unwritten! In 2019 I did a video with my good friend Clive so we could see who we collectively agreed would qualify or not. This year, I’ve asked a few of my Eurovision-loving friends to predict who they THINK will qualify (rather than who they want to qualify). This is a summary of how we voted – as well as my own personal thoughts and hopes.
So six of us made our choices, and here is who we collectively thought would qualify:
The (predicted) qualifiers
With 6 votes out of 6, we all agreed that the following countries will qualify:
- Lithuania, Sweden, Cyprus and Malta
Solid choices there, though the if there was to be any uncertainty in that four, it would be Sweden (though I still think it is fairly sure to go through)
The following two countries got 5 out of 6 people saying they will qualify:
- Russia, Ukraine
I totally agree with these two – I can’t see them not qualifying.
Getting less consensus with these remaining four predicted qualifiers (with 4 out of 6 of us choosing them:
- Australia, Croatia, Israel and Azerbaijan
These came as a surprise to me – Australia I did pick but I have to say I’m surprised others did too. I think and hope the juries could do this justice. On the other three, I personally don’t see all three going through as they are similar sounding songs – uptempo female solo dance pop – and all in a similar part of the running order. I’d be surprised if more than two of the three qualified (and my personal view is it will just be Croatia).
The (predicted) non-qualifiers
So those were our qualifiers, so our non qualifiers are:
- Slovenia (0), North Macedonia (0), Ireland (2), Norway (3), Belgium (3), Romania (2)
The numbers in brackets are the how many of us picked each one to qualify. Belgium I personally think (and hope) will qualify. Norway is borderline I think, could go either way. Ireland I hope will qualify (and I predicted it to) but I think it’s going to be a tough one. I think it will be extremely difficult for Slovenia and North Macedonia to qualify. At the moment, it does seem like Romania will struggle but they could pull in a big diaspora vote and the juries may like it, so don’t rule Roxen out just yet.
Who are your qualifiers? Either your predictions or your hopes? Let me know in the comments below!