If Eurovision used FPTP

I can't say I liked Azerbaijan's entry for the Eurovision song contest last night - but then none of entries were songs I'd actually go out and buy. But a bizarre comment on Twitter last night from one @georgeowers that "I notice that #eurovision uses First-Past-the-Post" (what?!) set me thinking: what would Eurovision be like if it actually did use First Past The Post instead of its present system (a version of the Borda count)?

Last night's results are here - and it's clear from this table that under First Past The Post, if each country had had only one vote, and had given that one vote to the country it gave 'douze points' to last night, the winner would have been Bosnia & Herzegovina, who actually came sixth last night. Bosnia & Herzegovina had only 11.6 per cent of countries' first preferences, but under a First Past The Post system that would have been enough to propel them to victory. First Past The Post does love a loser, it seems.

But the more interesting issue is what would happen in successive years. We all know that voting in the Eurovision song contest is about the politics not the music - heaven help us if it's about the music! So presumably in the years that followed Bosnia & Herzegovina's win, a 'stop Bosnia & Herzegovina' movement would build up among other countries, who would begin to coalesce around whichever country was most likely to achieve the support necessary to topple Bosnia & Herzegovina.

Fewer votes (under FPTP countries would have only one vote, remember) would go to other countries as more and more efforts were made to oust Bosnia & Herzegovina. Countries who would have achieved only one or two points in Year 1 would receive the dreaded 'nul points' year after year as votes concentrated around Bosnia & Herzegovina and its nearest opponent.

After four or five years of receiving 'nul points' it's hard not to imagine some of these countries dropping out altogether, to avoid the expense of what was clearly going to be an expensive and predictable annual humiliation. The pool of entrants would become smaller and smaller year on year, until the whole thing was reduced to a ritual and increasingly fierce scrap between half a dozen Balkan states, while viewers across the rest of Europe became totally disengaged and switched off in their droves.

I can't imagine for a minute why that reminds me of the current state of British parliamentary politics - no, I really can't.

(h/t to @stuartbonar)