The first semi-final of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest takes place Tuesday, May 8 in Lisbon, Portugal. Will we go 10-for-10 in our guesses for who will qualify?
After much number-crunching, YouTube watching, head scratching, and on-air disagreements, we have finally compiled our data and made our prediction for which ten acts we think will advance out of the first semi-final of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest.
The 10 acts that we think will advance, presented in alphabetical order, are:
- Austria
- Azerbaijan
- Belgium
- Bulgaria
- Cyprus
- Czech Republic
- Estonia
- Finland
- Greece
- Israel
Let's talk about our confidence levels, shall we?
Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, and Israel landed in the top 10 across all metrics we use to compile our final prediction. We love them, the oddsmakers love them, and folks on YouTube love them. That's full consensus in our mind.
Austria, Bulgaria, and Finland are a little iffy, but we still feel pretty confident about those countries advancing. Austria's rehearsal footage didn't reveal much beyond a strong vocal, so we're hoping there are some visual surprises in the broadcast to push the entry into qualifying. On the flipside, Finland has been improving in our scores since rehearsal footage came out, so the iffy-ness comes from our pre-rehearsal scores. Bulgaria should be fine, though one of our metrics had the song as #11 (it'll be fine... right?).
Azerbaijan and Belgium are our bubble entries to qualify. Azerbaijan has been hovering around 10 across all of our metrics throughout the season. Though the rehearsal footage looked impressive, going first in the running order of an incredibly competitive semi-final will make Azerbaijan's job more difficult. Could the country's perfect qualifying streak come to an end Tuesday?
Belgium has been slipping throughout rehearsals. Mike is the only panelist to still have the song in his top 10 and the oddsmakers have cooled on the entry as well. Belgium's recent hot streak is in trouble, and this is the entry we are least confident about.
We'll find out the results at the end of the first semi-final, which takes place today at 21:00 CET / 3pm Eastern / 12pm Pacific, live from Lisbon, Portugal.