Modeling Voting Behavior in the Eurovision Song Contest

We examine the determinants of voting behavior of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) held every year in Europe since 1956. After the televoting system was first introduced in 1998, logrolling of cultural and geographic between countries has been increased. We modeled voting behavior taking into consideration the individual characteristic of performer and voter, as well as quality of song. Estimation result of the linear voting equation shows that not only quality of the song is an important part of voting but also affinity variables are very crucial determinants of voting equation. Estimation result also indicates that order of appearance in the contest, the language of the song and the gender of the performing artist turn out to be quite important parameters in explaining voting behavior.