Lithuania | Did a Jury member's error cost Lithuania a place in the final?
Photo Credits: EBU/ eurovision.tv (Thomas Hanses)
Another day, another round of post-Eurovision drama. After it appeared that jurors from the Czech and the Swedish jury appeared to have put their rankings in reverse order, it seems that we can a Russian juror to this list. And this error could have hindered Lithuania in a really significant way.
It seems that juror Igor Gulyaev may have put his semi final rankings in reverse order, as after all the jury rankings were released, it shows that Gulyaev ranked Azerbaijan last and Denmark first. In contrast, in the Grand Final, it seems that Azerbaijan and Denmark switched in terms of his rankings, being first and last respectively.
Considering that it is highly unusual for a juror to have a complete change of heart in the space of two days as well as his semi final rankings being very out of sync with the rest of the Russian jury, it is likely that he did in fact put his rankings in the wrong order. You can check out Russia's Jury rankings in the links below. Igor Gulyaev is Juror C.
Semi Final 2: https://eurovision.tv/event/tel-aviv-2019/second-semi-final/results/russia
Grand Final: https://eurovision.tv/event/tel-aviv-2019/grand-final/results/russia
To add more insult to injury, it has been calculated that if Gulyaev put his rankings the right way up, Denmark's 3 points from the Russians would have been deducted from their final tally, knocking them out of the semi finals and paving a path for Lithuania's Jurius Veklenko to the final.
It must have been a dramatic couple of days for the Lithuanian delegation, as recently it has come to light that there may be an error in the Italian televote rankings, which may has also cost Lithuania their place in the final. The Lithuanian broadcaster, LRT, has contacted the EBU for clarity over the potential error.
You can watch Lithuania's entry below:
What do you think of all this jury drama? Do you think Lithuania deserved qualification? Tell us what you think in the comments below and be sure to follow us on social media.
