Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to today’s Eurovision statistical map, which is all about age of lead singer/s representing each country this year. The dichotomy of youth versus experience is always interesting and it’s especially curious to find cultural and geographic trends regarding whether countries opt for younger or ‘older’ artists.
The average age of a lead singer this year is 29 years, 8 months - a marked increase on many previous years. This average has been pulled up by the presence of a much larger contingent than usual of artists aged 35+ - over a quarter of competing artists this year. It’s something I love to see, as realising a dream of being in ESC should be open to all ages.
I have divided the map into two colours for artists below and above the average age, with darker shades for the two extremes. I’m fascinated by trends crossing country borders, such as:
all of the Nordics, except Denmark, opting for younger than averafe artists
all the automatic qualifiers, except the UK, doing the same - but out of them, only Italy sending an artist from the youngest age bracket.
the Mediterranean countries, with the sole exception of Portugal and Albania, all opting for younger than average artists
the Baltics all sending older than average artists and the Balkans almost entirely sending younger than average artists.
most of the older than average artists coming from a geographically contiguous strip going north-to-south from Estonia to Slovenia, and west to east from Austria to Ukraine
How all the former USSR countries, excepting the Baltics, went for artists aged 29-33.
Of the top 10 currently in the bookies’ odds, only two (Lithuania and San Marino) have lead singers who are older than the annual average - and the top 5 has a much younger average age of 22.4, so it looks like we may have a younger than average singer winning for the third consecutive year. That being said, everything can happen from now until the grand final!
![Countries participating in the Eurovision Song Contest 2016.
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![Eurovision Map with borders colored according to average vote points exchanged between neighbors.
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