Poli Genova and her song “If Love Was Crime” placed Bulgaria at the 4th place during the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest. This has been the biggest success for this country in the history of the contest. Let us recall that in 2007 Elitsa Todorova and Stoyan Yankulov - Stundzhi and their song "Voda" placed fifth. Poli herself has been on the Eurovision stage before and was also the host of the Children’s Eurovision contest that took place in Bulgaria last year.

The voting rules during this year’s song contest had been overhauled and votes were split, with a vote of each country's jury cast first before votes from viewers were announced.

After a severe Russian-Ukrainian-Australian battle for first place, winner became Ukraine’s Jamala, with a song-story about the deportation of Crimean Tatars under Stalin’s regime. Second was Australian Dami Im and third placed Russian Sergei Lazarev. In practice, Bulgaria has achieved the best result among the EU Member States.

Bulgaria received the most serious support from neighboring Macedonia with a total of 20 points gathered after the votes of the viewers and jury. Viewers in Cyprus and Spain gave the maximum of 12 points for Bulgaria and this significantly improved the final result. In addition to Macedonia, the countries whose professional juries assessed highly the performance of Poli Genova and gave 10 points each were Slovenia, France, Ireland, and Malta. Bulgarians gave the most points to the Russian song, but Russia did not give a single point to Bulgaria.

Days before the big final and during the concert social networks were simply flooded with posts, comments, and shares of anything related to the song contest and the Bulgarian participation in it. Famous musicians, actors, athletes, journalists and even representatives of the Orthodox Church voiced support for Poli and her team. The big number of votes coming from Bulgarians living abroad has also greatly contributed to the result of Poli. (Viewers located in a country cannot vote for the same country’s participant.) Many of Bulgarians living abroad were using social networks to urge other compatriots outside the country to vote for Poli Genova.

Together with her team and thanks to her professionalism Poli Genova managed to attract the attention and support of millions of people from all over the world and won another positive vote for this country.