And the winner is…

A little more than a week since we launched the first online Presidential debate (or mashup, as we like to call it), it’s time to announce the winner and share some additional "results."

In our poll, which asked people who they'd vote for after watching the mashup, Barack Obama was the winner with 35% of the votes. Senator Obama squeaked by Hillary Clinton, who received 31% of the votes. To hear what Obama had to say about winning, check out our "People of the Web" story on the results, which includes an interview we conducted this morning.

But the votes don’t tell the entire story. We also looked at which clips the audience was actually watching and came away with some interesting findings:

• Hillary Clinton was by far the most watched candidate. Thirty-five percent of all clips watched were Clinton's, while Obama came in second with 25%.
• The audience was most interested in the “wildcard” question, in which comedian Bill Maher surprised each candidate with personalized questions on a variety of topics. Forty-two percent of the clips watched were wildcard questions, followed by Iraq (34%), healthcare (15%), and education (9%).
• Women were more interested in education and healthcare, while men preferred the wildcard question.
• Older Americans were more likely to select questions on the topic of healthcare, while younger Americans were more interested in what the candidates had to say on education (that one didn’t surprise us much).
• The most popular clip among women in Iowa was Edwards on healthcare.
• Dennis Kucinich was one of the most viewed candidates in Seattle.

Part of what made the Presidential mashup so interesting to me was that we were putting control in Presidential forum like never before, and it was an exciting experiment to see what our users cared about most.

And speaking of users, you may be asking yourself how many people actually watched this debate. We had more than 1.1 million viewers, who streamed approximately 4.4 million video clips. Thirty-nine percent of the audience represented the 18-35 demographic. That means our debate attracted about 429,000 18- to 35-year-olds. That’s more from this demographic than any debate so far!

If you haven’t yet had an opportunity to check out the debate, you can do so here, or head over to Jumpcut to mash it up for your own site. We’re still in talks with the Republican candidates and hope to have an update on the next debate soon.

Neeraj Khemlani
VP, Programming & Development
Yahoo! News & Info