Iceland 2024: The detailed results of Söngvakeppnin

Iceland public broadcaster RUV has published the detailed results of the Icelandic national final Söngvakeppnin. Hera Björk won the national final against early predictions. These results were put into question almost immediately by Bashar Murad’s fans. There were evidence of alleged irregularities in the voting process. Moreover, the co-author of “Wild West” demanded an independent investigation to clear these accusations.

Following this controversy, RUV has published a statement. In their response, RUV admits that there were mistakes in the voting process in particular in the SMS voting. However, according to them, the difference in the number of votes between the first and second place is so significant that the final result still stands as valid.

The mistake in conducting the SMS election consisted in the fact that in the duel between the two top songs, there was a typing error with the SMS numbers of both contestants, which were used when sending SMS from an app to the system of the telephone companies. This resulted in the fact that neither of the songs received the SMS votes they were intended for from the app.

The detailed results

Bashar Murad won the first round of Söngvakeppnin as you can see in the first results:

	Number of votes in the previous round	The verdict of the jury
Bashar Murad – Wild West	26,359	21,304
VÆB – Bíómynd	15,727	13,656
Hera Björk – Scared of Heigts	15,406	16,661
Sigga Ózk – Into The Atmosphere	14,595	16,114
ANITA – Downfall	10,124	14,476

However, Hera Björk took the lead in the final duel between the top 2, making her the overall winner of the Iceland final. Here are the final results:

	Call-in votes	Number of SMS votes
Hera Björk – Scared of Heigts	68,768	1,109
Bashar Murad – Wild West	49,832	1,005

These are the final results obtained from adding the votes of the first round, from the public and the jury to the votes received in the final duel. Hera’s song won with 100,835 votes against 97,495.