#LeadersDebate

Tonight sees history in the making, the first ever televised debate between the three main candidates for the job of Prime Minister. Despite other countries such as America having done this sort of thing for nearly fifty years, this is the first time the UK media companies have managed to convince them all to appear together, unscripted and answering questions that they have never seen before.

Overall, it was quite insightful and although there wasn't a whole lot new that we learned that couldn't have been found out else where I think the format allowed many people who wouldn't have normally had access to some of the information a chance to find out without having to trawl through a manifesto.

As expected, Nick Clegg came out on top but then he really had nothing to lose. As a relatively unknown face and unknown name in a lot of cases, any appearance on prime time TV would have significantly boosted his campaign. Whilst he was clearly not as good a speaker as the other two, the fact that he held his own against the two major parties meant that he gained more from this event than either Labour or the Tories as was reflected in the opinion polls, where all of them placed him higher and most significantly higher than his companions.

David Cameron on the other hand seemed to come out much worse. He had the most riding on this debate being the favourite for the job but the more I see him on TV, the less likely I am to vote for him. Whereas Nick Clegg comes across as the voice of reason and Gordon Brown the voice of experience, David Cameron always seems to come across as slightly angry. This immediately makes me wonder whether or not he could cope with the pressure of the job or not.

In the middle we have Mr Brown. I was actually quite surprised at how well he came across in this debate because his party and him to a great extent have been responsible for all of the major political decisions of the past thirteen years. Even with this on his shoulders however, he came across as calm and reasoned and even got the best joke / jibe of the evening when he thanked Mr Cameron for putting his face on their posters.

The best part of the whole debate however was watching the reaction on Twitter. According to the stats from TweetMinster, the final stats were: total tweets: 184,396; average frequency 29.06 tweets per second; total tweeters: 36,483. Pretty impressive I think and although some of these will have been re-tweets of funny comments people had made or simply off topic and spam messages, the majority that I saw whilst watching the reaction on TwitterFall were genuine comments about leader preference and reactions to what they were saying.

Interestingly, nearly everyone seemed to see through the word play and political spin commenting that David Cameron had completed his ethnic bingo card after meeting people of several different ethnicities on his campaign tour. Always referring back the questioner by name seemed to be a big favourite as well with both Clegg and Cameron asking the audience member to identify themselves so that they could make eye contact. The problem with this of course is that watching from home, they missed the biggest audience of all. Approximately ten million people tuned in to watch on TV and so ignoring the camera meant they missed a very big trick. They also seemed to be avoiding eye contact with one another, especially when they were talking to each other - something that was picked up on Newsnight afterwards. To me this just seems childish but presumably there is some reason why they did it unless they were just being childish of course!