The Eurovision Song Contest has long been perceived as political in some sense, where judges and now televoters allocate points based on their nation's political relationship to the other countries, rather than on the musical value of the songs. An analysis of voting patterns does indeed show that certain countries tend to favour certain other countries with which they are politically aligned, or they are the same nation. The most extreme example of this is between Greece and Cyprus, which have awarded each other the maximal 12 points every single time since televoting was introduced in 1998.
Over the past few years, an increasing number of winners has been drawn from Central and Eastern Europe. However it is the bigger Western European countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and France, known as the "Big Four" that provide larger than average financial support (without which the production of the Eurovision Song Contest would not be possible).
Countries like Italy, Austria and Luxembourg have dropped out of the contest now for some years for a mix of reasons related to funding, politics and artistic value.
Some of the Big Four TV commentators are open critics of political voting, such as Germany's Peter Urban and the UK's Terry Wogan (a long standing commentator for the BBC). Mr. Wogan has commented that most Western European countries now find it hard to win the contest, due to the increasing numbers of Central and Eastern European countries.
In 2008, Russia won the competition, but Wogan claimed that, "Russia was going to be the political winner from the beginning". Two of the Big Four countries, the United Kingdom and Germany, came joint last. France and Spain also appeared in the bottom ten entries.
These concerns by commentators have been confirmed by several academic papers showing that "block voting" from Eastern countries has almost removed any chance of seeing a Western country win the Eurovision Song Contest. The results of 2008 confirms the "block voting" phenomenon. Svante Stockselius, head of the Eurovision Song Contest, admitted that poor scores for Western European countries could be due to other countries voting against them.
As of 2008, the country which has entered the longest with no wins to their name is Portugal. They started entering in 1964, and are still awaiting their first win. Many of the journalists and commentators from different countries, that were following the competition, said that Portugal should have been the winner of Eurovision 2008.
It's time to change the rules of the contest and specially the voting system. Otherwise, the Western countries will never get a chance to win the Eurovision.
You can help by signing this online petition that will be sent to Mr. Svante Stockselius.
Thank you for your attention and contribution.