Immersed this week in the process of electing the representative of Spain in Eurovision 2023, the Benidorm Fest poses two big unknowns to the viewers. The first is, of course, who will win and the second: What the hell is that demoscopic vote?
Last year, the performance of the vote at the Benidorm Fest brought a lot of queue. Although the criticism was taken by the members of the professional jury that catapulted Chanel and its justmo to first place, the truth is that not everything is divided between them and the televote. There is a third leg that, until now, has gone unnoticed but whose decision percentage is the same as that of the viewers who vote from home.
Who are the members of the demoscopic jury?
In the two semifinals of the Benidorm Fest, the 18 participating songs are put to a vote. From these two galas come the eight finalists who will face each other for first place in the final on February 4. However, in each and every one of the galas, the responsibility falls 50% on a professional jury, 25% for a demographic jury and the other 25% remaining is a matter of televoting.
It is then when the question arises: what is a poll jury? The demoscopic sample consists of a jury selected by the IPSOS company (a multinational market research and consulting firm based in Paris) and made up of a sample of the population: 350 men and women of different age groups starting from 18 years of age and from all the autonomous communities of Spain in a quantity proportional to the number of inhabitants.
@benidormfest
How are the members of the demoscopic jury selected?
Although 430 people have been selected to replace any loss that may occur, only the vote of the 350 in charge of providing a ranking of the contestants by number of votes will count: 40, 35, 30, 28, 25, 22, 15 and 13.
The identity of all the people hired is anonymous and they have been captured through route sheets, with interviewers located in different geographical areas. In this way, each interviewer looked for people who gave the profile and submitted them to a questionnaire with a filter related to “whether or not they like Spanish music”. Only those who did like it passed the filter.
Of course, people related to the recording industry, the television sector, journalists and advertising professionals or market studies cannot participate in this jury. Those chosen sign a confidentiality clause and are given a QR code to be able to download and use, once downloaded, the application designed for the Benidorm Fest.
Cover photo | @benidormfest