Semi-final 2 predictions

It's harder to predict when you're not seeing any rehearsal videos, and have to go on impressions from fellow bloggers. As it was, I scored 8/10 on Tuesday - and a different 8/10 after watching the show!

Semi 2 is a little easier, not least because the fewest you can possibly get right is five, but also because there's a couple of real no-hopers and a couple of obvious perennial qualifiers. Romania and Greece are obviously sailing through, and Macedonia and Georgia are perhaps equally hopeless at the bottom.

Until this week, I'd always had Poland as a certain non-qualifier. It's getting almost universally positive reviews from bloggers, but my instinct is still that the song doesn't have strong appeal to a wide range of Thursday night televoter - particularly with the first half of the song in Polish.

At the other end of the scale, I'd put in Malta, Austria and Finland as likely qualifiers, which leaves a huge swathe in the middle. Norway really should, but I'm worried for it. Israel the same - both are good, but have the potential to not quite 'catch' with the voting public. Switzerland I've always counted out, but everything seems to be going right for it in rehearsals. Belarus on the other hand is right near the bottom of some of the betting markets, but I've always assumed it's a safe qualifier...

So, hmm... let's try a prediction.

1. Romania
2. Greece
3. Malta
4. Austria
5. Finland
6. Belarus
7. Switzerland
8. Israel
9. Norway
10. Lithuania

11. Slovenia
12. Poland
13. Ireland
14. Georgia
15. Macedonia

I'm not sure of this at all! What do you think?