Latvia has won the 12th annual edition of ChatVote, the traditional event held by escgo.com and the #esc chatroom to find our favourite song ahead of each year’s Eurovision Song Contest!

In the 2016 edition, “Heartbeat” by Justs received a total of 305 points, ahead of Zoë from Austria in second place (245 points) and Poli Genova from Bulgaria in third place (233 points). Meanwhile, Ireland propped up the table, receiving just 7 points in last place.

You can see the final scoreboard here:

As part of this year’s new ChatVote concept, 50% of the total score was determined by “juries” – regular chatters who gave their votes in ESC-style (12-10-8…), as in previous years – and 50% by “televoting”, which took the form of a fast-paced five-minute poll that was held LIVE in the chat at the start of this evening’s event. Another innovation this year was a live-streamed scoreboard, which updated after each jury presented its points. This culminated in a live graphical presentation of the all-important televotes at the climax of the show.

We wanted to breathe some new life into our beloved ChatVote and keep the excitement as high as possible right until the end of the show – and we think it was a success!

For the record, Ukraine was leading after our 28 juries had finished voting, with 122 points. Eventual winner Latvia was closely behind with 113, followed by Bulgaria with 107. The televotes then turned this on its head, with Ukraine pushed down into 4th place overall as Justs stormed ahead with a huge score from our assembled voters in the chat. It just goes to show that every vote counts!

We can now also publish the full results of the semi-finals, in which the voters were asked to nominate their ten favourite songs in each semi in two LIVE polls after we had previewed the entries in the #esc chat. This gave the following results:

Semi 1: Czech Republic 21 nominations, Russia 19, Austria 18, Azerbaijan 18, Iceland 18, Croatia 16, Netherlands 16, Estonia 15, Armenia 14, Cyprus 14, Malta 13, Hungary 13, Bosnia & Herzegovina 9, Moldova 9, San Marino 8, Finland 7, Greece 4, Montenegro 2

Semi 2: Bulgaria 19 nominations, Australia 17, Latvia 17, Ukraine 16, Serbia 14, Norway 13, Ireland 12, Denmark 11, Macedonia 11, Poland 11, Belgium 9, Slovenia 9, Georgia 8, Lithuania 8, Israel 7, Romania 7, Switzerland 5, Belarus 5, Albania 1

We’d like to thank everybody for their support and participation in this year’s ChatVote – and we hope we have made some entertaining NEW changes that will help the event to live long into the future. Don’t forget you can also read all about the past editions of the ChatVote here!