"Will we go 10-for-10 in our guesses for who will qualify out of the first Eurovision semi-final?
After much number-crunching, YouTube watching, head scratching, and consensus building, we have finally compiled our data and have made our prediction for which ten acts we think will advance out of the first semi-final of the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest.
The 10 acts that we think will advance, presented in alphabetical order, are:
- Armenia
- Australia
- Azerbaijan
- Belgium
- Finland
- Greece
- Latvia
- Moldova
- Portugal
- Sweden
Let's talk about our confidence levels, shall we?
Azerbaijan, Belgium, Portugal, and Sweden are the acts in which we are most confident, as they have all appeared in the top 10 of every single metric we have measured in this process.
Armenia, Australia, Greece, and Moldova we also feel pretty confident about. Each had one metric that fell out of the top 10, but have otherwise strong records. Australia is the iffiest of the group, as Isaiah's rehearsal footage was his low-scoring metric, which may indicate a slide in popularity. Moldova has been just making it into the top 10 of most rankings, though one of our gut predictions has "Hey Mamma" as 14th.
The two acts that are gambles on this list are Finland and Latvia. We have been bullish on Latvia since the start of this process, and the song has been just popular enough in rehearsals to push it into top 10 territory. Finland has had a late surge in popularity since rehearsals began. However, in our scoring rubric, it is only one point ahead of Montenegro. Cyprus is also on the bubble, trailing Finland by only five points. Iceland may also have an outside chance of snagging a golden ticket to the Grand Final, though the data and our guts don't seem to suggest that outcome.
We'll find out the results at the end of the first semi-final, which takes place today at 22:00 EET / 21:00 CET / 3pm Eastern / 12pm Pacific, live from Kyiv, Ukraine.
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