We were at the final for Eesti Laul 2018 in Tallinn on the weekend. If you are looking for a great national final to check out live, this one is ace. If you’re merely looking for a cool place to visit, Tallinn is ace. The team at ERR does a marvelous job both behind the scenes and in terms of the production overall.
Click here for my report on behalf of ESCInsight.com. Here’s the winner:
La forza – Elina Nechayeva (Source: YouTube/Eurovision Song Contest
The numbers
Unlike the EBU, ERR releases their televote data shortly after a winner is announced. And we got the jury votes live during the results portion of the show. Interestingly, the aggregate total of the jury scores were converted to the douze points scale. Then there was a count-back from lowest to highest combined jury+televote points, until four remained. The top three were announced without any televote scores and a new superfinal televote (only) took place. Here are the scores:
| Entry | Jury raw | Jury Converted | Televote Raw | Televote Converted | Total |
| Elina Nechayeva | 113 | 12 | 37628 | 12 | 24 |
| Vajé | 51 | 5 | 5995 | 10 | 15 |
| Sibyl Vane | 86 | 10 | 2898 | 4 | 14 |
| Stig Rästa | 79 | 7 | 5714 | 7 | 14 |
| Iris & Agoh | 52 | 6 | 3427 | 6 | 12 |
| Karl-Kristian & Karl Killing | 47 | 3 | 5786 | 8 | 11 |
| Frankie Animal | 83 | 8 | 2031 | 2 | 10 |
| Evestus | 41 | 2 | 2977 | 5 | 7 |
| Nika | 50 | 4 | 1991 | 1 | 5 |
| Elis Pärna & Gerli Padar | 34 | 1 | 2308 | 3 | 4 |
La Forza roared to victory with both the juries and the public. Not much to analyse there. The rest is much more interesting. Elina Nechayeva became the prohibitive favourite since her semi-final a few weeks ago. And in the arena Elina was the only artist who got a roar of support whenever she sang, spoke or smiled. Biggest reaction by far.
When Vajé was announced as a super finallist we knew they were top three in the televote–probably top two: they were second. But Young by the Karl “twins” was third in the televote, pushing Stig Rästa into fourth with the public. Between second and fourth with the general public came down to less than 300 votes!
Stig Rästa being in the super final was not a surprise: he is a local hero in Estonia and his song was lovely (his vocal wasn’t, alas). But he and Sibyl Vane were tied on 14 total points, with Stig’s higher public vote breaking the tie (Thousand Words was 7th with the public).
Vajé making the superfinal? A shocker, since the jury support for Laura was tepid in the semi-final (they qualified as the fifth “televote only” finalist” and final (sixth with juries). And Vajé were a single point ahead of Stig and Sibyl.
An interesting result for an excellent national selection.