"When 10 of the entries are toss-ups for qualifying, you know it's going to be a good Eurovision semi-final.
In all the years we have covered the Eurovision Song Contest--both here and other sites--we have not encountered a semi-final quite as tricky to predict as this year's second semi-final. There is very little consensus among the telESCope staff or the external metrics (YouTube views, odds, etc.), which means the bubble/margin of error is quite large.
Regardless, we have picked ten entries that we expect to move on to Saturday's Grand Final. Maybe "expect" is too strong a word, but we know mathematically that at least two of our guesses will be correct...
- Belarus
- Bulgaria
- Denmark
- FYR Macedonia
- Hungary
- Israel
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Romania
- Serbia
Bulgaria, Denmark, and the Netherlands are the only entries we feel certain about, as they have been in the top 10 of all metrics throughout the season. The only other entry to receive all thumbs up from the telESCope staff in the most recent rankings (done Wednesday) was Austria, but those rankings were all near the cutoff and held down by lower rankings in other metrics.
The other area of consensus was in the realm of what we are confident will not qualify. Our apologies to Lithuania, Malta, San Marino, and Switzerland, but y'all never really caught fire with us or the public at large. Hopefully you can prove us wrong Thursday evening.
That leaves 10 entries that could be considered toss-ups. Strong cases could be made for any of those entries advancing, depending on which metric you wish to stand behind. We think it will be safe to say that if anyone goes 10 for 10 Thursday night, you should buy that person a drink.
The second semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest will take place Thursday at 21.00 CET / 3pm Eastern / 12pm Pacific. US friends, we recommend watching Sweden's livestream (or catch it later if you have jobs or something interfering with your ability to watch)."