While the motto of the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest‘s motto ‘Celebrating Diversity‘ was not a reference to the European Union’s motto, it has not been without controversy either. And also the wider geopolitics of the event caused some tensions, first and foremost over a controversy between the host country Ukraine and Russia.
Putting geopolitics aside, the performances were widely regarded as a celebration of diversity. Portugal – rather uncontroversially – is seen as a deserving winner, having scored 758 points for the song ‘Amar Pelos Dois’ performed by Salvador Sobral. The following cartogram shows all countries who participated in the final round of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest resized according to the total number of points received:

(click for larger version)

The countries in this map are coloured by geographic region. Additional labels show the total number of points received (countries with 100 points and below are not labelled).
As can be seen, Eurovision is not a strictly European event. Over the years quite a few countries that are not geographically part of Europe have participated. Most surprising perhaps is the appearance of Australia in this map. The country, where Eurovision is a quite popular television event, participated first in 2015. First seen as a one-off event, it has participated again two following years and reached the 9th rank this year.
More detailed geopolitical interpretation of the results (which are arguably not only about a song’s or a perfomance’s quality) requires a more detailed look into the voting patterns by individual countries that can not be seen from this map (here is a similar analysis from 2013: http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/?p=4017). But in the end one should not become too serious about it: Predictions of the United Kingdom getting punished for Brexit by its fellow European countries did not turn into reality.

The content on this page has been created by Benjamin Hennig using data by the European Broadcasting Union. Please contact me for further details and the terms of use.