For most of its 150 million-plus viewers, the Eurovision song contest is an unmissable annual extravaganza of glitter and tight trousers, a joyful celebration of silliness and a reminder of the impenetrability of other nations’ tastes in pop music.
For three political scientists from the universities of Amsterdam and Tilburg, it is a massive mine of precious data that has led them – they argue in an academic paper published this month – to a novel conclusion about the populist radical right.
