Israel has won the #esc Chatvote for 2014, the 10th anniversary edition of this now-traditional event!

Mei Finegold’s “Same Heart” took victory with 136 points, ahead of bookies’ favourite Armenia in second, the United Kingdom in third and something of a surprise package, the Netherlands, in fourth. At the other end of the scoreboard, Cristina Scarlat’s “Wild Soul” failed to convince our jurors, with Moldova finishing bottom of the pile with just 14 points.

Following two competitive semi-finals (the results of which can be found at the end of this article) and several enjoyable “preview nights” in the chat, a total of 25 #esc regulars cast their votes on our finalists, thereby continuing a tradition that dates back to 2005. As the ten years of ChatVote history show, sometimes we’re in tune with the wider European taste – voting for Loreen in 2012 and Lena in 2010, for example – and sometimes we prefer the fan hypes that don’t do so well at ESC. We’ll soon find out which category Mei Finegold falls into!

The full scoreboard for the final of ChatVote 2014 is shown below:

Continuing with two features we introduced last year, this was a dynamic scoreboard that updated after every set of votes – and that also showed the many faces of our voters. Thanks to all of them for their continued support and attendance, which undoubtedly makes ChatVote one of the annual highlights for the #esc community!

As mentioned above, we can now also publish the full results of the semi-finals, in which the voters (20 in total) were simply asked to nominate their ten favourites to qualify from each semi. This gave the following results:

Semi 1: Azerbaijan 17, Armenia 16, Montenegro 16, Sweden 16, Ukraine 15, Estonia 14, Hungary 14, Netherlands 14, Albania 12, Moldova 12, San Marino 11, Latvia 10, Portugal 10, Russia 9, Iceland 8, Belgium 6

Semi 2: Israel 20, Norway 19, Ireland 17, Austria 16, Macedonia 16, Slovenia 16, Malta 15, Greece 14, Romania 13, Finland 11, Poland 10, Belarus 10, Switzerland 9, Lithuania 8, Georgia 6

Thanks again from the #esc ChatVote team – and here’s to the next ten years!