Is The Eurovision Song Contest Rigged?

FiveThirtyEight Politics

Since 1956, European countries have been gathering each year to compete in the Eurovision song contest -- a competition of largely pop and techno artists that can often feel like a parody of European tastes in music. There have long been accusations of bias in the voting process and last Saturday's competition -- which Sweden won -- was no exception. In this installment of the podcast, Galen speaks with statistics and health economics professor Gianluca Baio, who created a model to determine whether there really are biases advantaging or disadvantaging certain nations.

Galen also speaks with Courtney Kennedy, vice president of methods and innovation at the Pew Research Center, who recently published a study showing that the polling industry of today bears little semblance to the polling industry at the start of the century. The days of real human beings randomly dialing landline phones are gone, but what does that mean for the accuracy of public opinion research?

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