Countries only vote in the semifinal in which they qualify (except the automatic qualifiers, who are assigned a semifinal to vote in). There probably is a systematic difference between the semifinals and the finals though.
Yesterday before the show I made a bet with a return of 2.0 that a participant of Semi 2 will win the contest (I think it will be Sweden, but wanted to hedge it somewhat). So it is nice that your calculations predict high chances for Sweden, Malta, Norway and Estonia. ;)
Comparing the MCMC calculations and book maker odds are interesting. For example you rank Turkey (which I think is the better song) higher than Azerbaijan, but in the odds it is dramatically different. A return of 3.0 when Turkey comes ahead. Hmhmhm.
Be somewhat wary of the predictions for the countries which have automatically qualified - they're based on much less information than the other countries. The reason that Turkey is ranked above Azerbaijan is that the model has absolutely no information about the quality of Azerbaijan's song. Turkey, on the other hand, made it through a semifinal, so their song can't be completely abysmal. That said, Turkey do have a pretty strong structural advantage in terms of incoming vote patterns. Out of the 10,000 simulations, Turkey beat Azerbaijan about 75% of the time.
Also, this should go without saying, but this is not financial advice, please don't blame me if you lose money betting on the predictions of this model, etc.
I am not a big gambler. But I wonder if these sort of calculations could be better in forecasting than prediction markets like intrade.com.
Very interesting work on the Eurovision at least! There are so many potential variables. Age, gender, BPM of the song, changes in the performance, political stuff. For example I don't expect any points for Azerbaijan from Germany, because the media reported very critically on the undemocratic regime. But don't know how this will play out in the rest of Europe. Are you American? This song contest and its history must be pretty strange for outsiders.
I'm Irish, so I'm fairly familiar with the contest's history. I do live in the USA now though.
I am a bit skeptical about how effective politically motivated boycotts can be in Eurovision. The problem is that it's not possible to cast a vote against a country, so the only way a boycott can work is if it convinces a lot of people who were otherwise going to vote to abstain. That said, there has been quite a lot of coverage in at least the Western European media which has been very critical of Azerbaijan, so we'll see. It's also just possible that nobody will like their song - I'm not sure how we'd tell which had happened.
