Writing in The Times last Saturday, just hours before the show started in Oslo, Roger Boyes observed that “the brute reality of the new Europe, if Eurovision is any guide, is that small countries collude and plot to trip up the grandees from Old Europe…Under the present voting system neither the Germans nor the British will win. This is testimony to the failure of these countries to build proper bridges within Europe.”

But then Germany did win. And it did so without the help of Greece, for whom it might be said the Germans have indeed been building bridges of late.

Boyes’s predictions for the fate of Europe’s “old grandees” (and “paymasters“) turned out to be more accurate in the case of the UK, which propped up the leaderboard in twenty fifth place. They derived from the published thoughts of Eurovision analyst Derek Gatherer, who believes the modern competition is dominated by three major voting alliances: The Balkan Bloc, The Vikings and The Warsaw Pact.

So how did Germany’s Lena Meyer escape this now dependable geopolitical stitch up? Using the top three votes from each participating nation, we went about mapping out this year’s voting patterns, and then applied Gatherer’s bloc-taxonomy to see what role it played in 2010.

What we discovered was that although regional preferences do indeed play some role in structuring the result, there are other factors affecting the pan-European political mood.

In spite of Germany’s rather fragile political state right now, its song was significantly boosted by votes from the Vikings and the Balkan Bloc.  And second-placed Turkey, whose EU accession plans have been repeatedly frowned upon in the Balkans, received the biggest push from that very grouping, as well as from the Big Four.

Of course ex-pats could well have played a major role in this. Perhaps one way to look at the Eurovision results is as a migration map for the continent:

Overall top votes distribution in the Eurovision Final (click on map for larger view)

Viking Empire: A Group of Traitors

Interestingly, the Viking Empire bloc appears to be the least strictly loyal, as they all left Iceland in the dry, refusing it any of the top points. Most of the Viking countries cast at least one of their top votes for Denmark and, perhaps uninspired by the other offerings from within the Nordic region, 7 out of 8 Viking countries looked just a little bit further afield, seemingly rewarding Germany with ’satellite’ status, with 6 of them giving  the song of that name 12 points.

Indeed it’s clear that the Vikings were instrumental in securing the win for Germany. Focusing all their might in voting for a Big Four country, they were the only group that did not cast any of their top three votes Turkey’s way, and a tendency to selectively ‘betray’ other alliance members meant that overall, their contribution was more flexible than that of the other two major geopolitical dispositions. In the end Satellite received 12 points from 8 countries, 6 of them in the Viking group.

Top votes for Germany in Eurovision Final (click on map for larger view)

Big Four: Infatuated with the Balkans

Although the UK did not get more than 5 points from any country, its own voting patterns turn out to be quite interesting, with the three top scores being allocated to countries from the Balkan group, thereby disregarding other members of the Big Four.

The UK was not the only nation won over by the Balkan group, however. Germany and France also cast two of their top three votes for a Balkan country and Spain gave its 10 points to Romania. This could partially be the result of migration in the past several years.

As a whole, the usual vote-swapping between the Big Four did not take place this year, with the exception of Spain, which supported Germany with 12 points.

Top votes for Turkey in Eurovision Final (click on map for larger view)

Balkan Bloc: United for Turkey

Balkan voters would appear to be a bit more inclined to inclusivity, with only one of their number – Croatia – sticking doggedly to voting only within the group. However, they still showed strong overall mutual support, as 55% of the countries in the group cast two of their top three votes for other Balkan states.

Supported by the Big Four, Turkey’s second place was largely achieved with a big push from the Balkan countries. Out of the 12 countries that gave top votes to Turkey, 6 were fellow Balkans.

Warsaw Pact: True to the Cause

The Warsaw Pact countries seem to be the most partisan as 30% of them (3 countries) exclusively rewarded other group countries with top marks. These were Georgia (voted for Belarus, Armenia and Azerbaijan), Russia (voted for Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) and Armenia (voted for Georgia, Russia and the Ukraine).  As a whole, interconnectedness within the Warsaw pact is high, with another 44% (4 countries) giving top votes to two song offerings from the Pact.

In spite of this apparent coherence however, they dispersed their votes among themselves instead of focusing on one country, thus failing to secure a win for their region.

Slovakia was one notable exception to the pact mentality, as it voted for songs from three unrelated regions. Slovakian citizens apparently voted by conviction (or, dare one say it, taste) rather than by a sense of neighbourly obligation, as they gave their top points to the eventual winner Germany, to runner-up Turkey and to Belgium.

All in all the results from this year’s Eurovision prove that relationships of proximity plus cultural and linguistic bonds continue to prevail in the Eurovision Song Contest, but with continued migration across the EU and the participants’ varied song selections, there are likely to be cracks between the major voting blocs through which surprise winners may continue to emerge.