Making your mind up time for the juries
Although the live show for the First Semi-Final takes place tomorrow evening, when viewers in 21 countries will have their opportunity to vote to decide the ten qualifiers. It is worth remembering that this evening's dress rehearsal is of equal significance, as this is the rehearsal that the professional juries will be watching and voting on, and they are responsible for 50% of the votes.
18 songs: 21 juries
Eighteen songs will participate in the First Semi-Final, and professional juries in each of the participating countries, as well as in Azerbaijan, Italy and Spain will be voting on tonight's dress rehearsal. They will account for 50% of the overall total.
Each jury will be comprised of five members, (including a chairperson) who will be the same jurors who will also be voting in the Final. They will monitored by an independent notary in each country. The jury consists of a variety of members in terms of age, gender, and background. They are all citizens of the country they are representing.
None of the jury members are connected with any of the participating songs or artists, in order that they can vote independently. All jury members have made signed declarations stating that they will vote independently.
The names of the jury members should be revealed by the broadcasters during the Final.
The Jury Voting
Each jury member will rank their top ten favourite songs, and award points from 1 to 8, 10 and 12 points.
The chairperson will allocate 12 points to the song having obtained the highest number of votes from all jury members, 10 points to the song having obtained the second highest number of votes, 8 points for the song having obtained the third highest number of votes, then 7 points next, and so on down to 1 point for the song having obtained the tenth highest number of votes from all jury members.
In the event of a tie for any of the above positions, the order of tying songs shall be determined by a show of hands by the jury members, with no abstentions allowed.
The EBU's televoting partner Digame will merge the points given by the jury and the televoters tomorrow night per individual country. If there is a tie between two or more songs between jury votes and televotes, then the song gaining the most televotes will be ranked higher.
The contenders
- Montenegro: Euro Neuro sung by Rambo Amadeus
- Iceland: Never Forget sung by Greta Salóme & Jónsi
- Greece: Aphrodisiac sung by Eleftheria Eleftheriou
- Latvia: Beautiful Song sung by Anmary
- Albania: Suus sung Rona Nishliu
- Romania: Zaleilah sung by Mandinga
- Switzerland: Unbreakable sung by Sinplus
- Belgium: Would You? sung by Iris
- Finland: När Jag Blundar sung by Pernilla
- Israel: Time sung by Izabo
- San Marino: The Social Network Song sung by Valentina Monetta
- Cyprus: La, La, Love sung by Ivi Adamou
- Denmark: Should've Known Better sung by Soluna Samay
- Russia: Party For Everybody sung by Buranovskiye Babushki
- Hungary: Sound Of Our Hearts sung Compact Disco
- Austria: Woki Mit Deim Popo sung by Trackshittaz
- Moldova: Lăutar sung by Pasha Parfeny
- Ireland: Waterline sung by Jedward
The live show of the First Semi-Final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 will take place on Tuesday 22nd of May at 21:00 CET and will broadcast live on eurovision.tv.
Watch behind the scenes video from the first dress rehearsal
