Who would Australia vote for?

Everyone is aware that block voting has been part of Eurovsion for many many years. If Australia were added to Eurovision, it would certainly add a new dimension to this style of voting. We are not geographically close to any of Europe but we do have a large percentage of our population with European heritage. It stands to reason to ask, which European countries have the most to gain by Australia joining Eurovision. Who would we vote for?

Historically we have links to a number of European nations. The most significant of these are clearly the United Kingdom and Ireland. Interestingly, Australians a very competitive with the English in particular (while being very fond of Scotland) which might actually work against the United Kingdom. Australia also has very large population groups that identify as being of European culture heritage. Most notably we have a large population or residents who identify as Greek, Italian and German (see Point 2 in Why does Australia love Eurovsion?).

Interestingly, Australia's Eurovision broadcasters SBS have been running their own televoting for Eurovision (which of course does not count towards the final result) for a number of  years now. There has been a few interesting results. A quick study of the 2011 and the 2010 votes show a couple of trends. It seems that the countries that benefit most from Australia's votes are Ireland, Greece and interestingly Serbia. All three of these countries were more popular in Australia than they were in the final Eurovision count.  Bosnia & Herzegovina and the Ukraine were both surprisingly in the top 10 for both years as well. The UK also did better than they should have in the Australia voting, although not well enough to get them close to the top of the list.

On the flip side, Australia joining Eurovision is bad news for this years host country Azerbaijan. In the Australian charts, Azerbaijan came 18th in 2010 and were dead last in 2011 when they won Eurovision.