Sweden: Problem with the voting in the first heat of Melodifestivalen 2024!

As every year, one of the biggest national finals, which captures the interest of eurofans, is the one in Sweden, the Melodifestivalen. Many people vote for their favourite artists in order to represent the country in the Eurovision Song Contest. If we look at last year’s numbers of voters in all the Melodifestivalen qualifiers, the number was between 512,000 and 542,000.

However, this year in the first qualifying round that number has plummeted to just over 460,000. Has the public’s interest waned? If we look at the programme’s viewing figures in conjunction with the number of voting units (i.e. the number of applications and the number of phones that voted) in each semi-final, we would come to anything but that conclusion.

Specifically:

• Round 1 – Spectators: 2.900.000
  Number of voting units: 460,794
• Round 2 – Viewers: 2,858,000
  Number of voting units: 589,162
• Stage 3 – Spectators: 2,755,000
  Number of voting units: 567,234
• Stage 4 – Spectators: 2,753,000
  Number of voting units: 555,108

There was a problem with the voting and the Melodifestivalen app in the first heat.

More specifically, according to exclusive information from Aftonbladet and Tobbe Ek, about 100,000 votes were lost in the first preliminary round of Melodifestivalen. Many viewers contacted Aftonbladet during the first round of the competition and reported that they could not get into the app to vote. According to SVT, this has not affected the outcome of the contest. However, the data suggests that there may be a lack of votes from almost 100,000 people.

During the contest, SVT will no longer publish the total number of votes in the different contests. Instead, it will announce the number of voting units.

What project manager Anders Wistbacka says.

The day after the first round, Melodifestivalen’s programme manager Anders Wistbacka confirmed that there were problems with the application and that this was due to an overloaded server. At the same time, however, he said that this did not affect the result.

“It was a server that was overloaded. There was just too much traffic on it and then there were some app users who had logged out of the app and had to log back in”.

Asked how he is sure that the lost votes did not affect the final result, he said:

“The eventual drop, if I can call it that, affects all viewers. So there’s no one who stands out, pure and simple. Which means that if it’s the case that we’re affected, it’s affected everyone evenly”.

Anders Wistbacka pointed out that it is a big problem when the application does not work as it should.

The application should simply work and be secure and fit for the purpose for which the application is intended. There are always a few people who have problems, but this time there were a few more.”

Source: Aftonbladet.se

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