In a recent article, we postulated:

What emerges quickly is that entries ranked in the top 5 of either the jury or televote rankings of their semi-final qualifies for that year’s Grand Final.

Well…we now have the full results from the semi-finals. Let’s see if the method held up.

Semi-final One

For this semi-final we suspected the following top fives:

• Jury: Slovenia, Serbia, Iceland, Greece, Portugal
• Televote: Greece, Australia, Serbia, Cyprus, Czech Republic

Thus, our aggregate projected list of qualifiers from this semi-final was: Slovenia, Serbia, Iceland, Greece, Portugal, Australia, Cyprus, Czech Republic (8 of 10 qualifiers). What were the actual top fives? Take a look:

Rank	Country	Televote
1	Iceland	151
2	Australia	140
3	Estonia	133
4	San Marino	124
5	Slovenia	93

2019 Semi-Final One Televote rankings (Source: Eurovision.tv)

Rank	Country	Jury
1	Czech Republic	157
2	Greece	131
3	Australia	121
4	Cyprus	95
5	Serbia	91

2019 Semi-Final One Jury rankings (Source: Eurovision.tv)

In other words, the actual aggregate projected list of qualifiers from this semi-final was: Slovenia, Serbia, Iceland, Greece, Portugal, Australia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, San Marino and Estonia.

The method worked; only, we had the lists wrong. And…had the Czechs and Slovenes and Greeks and Serbs and Cyprus on the wrong lists. *awkward*

Let’s move on…

Semi-final Two

For this semi-final we suspected the following top fives:

• Jury: Azerbaijan, Russia, Netherlands, Austria, Sweden
• Televote: Russia, Switzerland, Sweden, Malta, North Macedonia

And our aggregate projected list of qualifiers from this semi-final was: Azerbaijan, Russia, Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Malta, North Macedonia (8 of 10 qualifiers). These were the actual top fives:

Rank	Country	Televote
1	Norway	170
2	Netherlands	140
3	Switzerland	137
4	Russia	124
5	Azerbaijan	121

2019 Semi-Final Two Televote rankings (Source: Eurovision.tv)

Rank	Country	Jury
1	North Macedonia	155
2	Sweden	150
3	Netherlands	140
4	Malta	107
5	Azerbaijan	105

2019 Semi-Final Two Jury rankings (Source: Eurovision.tv)

Again, the actual aggregate projected list of qualifiers from this semi-final was: Azerbaijan, Russia, Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Malta, North Macedonia, and Norway. Again, Malta was on the wrong list and Sweden was only in the jury top 5.

Ça marche!

The method works! The only limitation is our ability to surmise the lists correctly! D’oh!