The election debates…live: ‘Is Nick Clegg the Susan Boyle of British politics?’

Some snapshots from national press online coverage of the party leader debates last night:

At the Guardian Andrew Sparrow’s Live Blog reported throughout the debate and recieved text message updates from a correspondant live in the studio: “Question 5 verdict: I thought this was Brown’s best answer, although I see the Guardian worm has just given a spike to Clegg.”

The Financial Times live blog is very comprhensive and provided full coverage; posts include straight reporting as well as comment such as: “9.49pm One colleague says she is already planning a drinking game for the next two debates. It’s one to for every time Cam mentions ’13 years’ and another every time Clegg talks about ‘the other two not being straight with you’. She can’t think of a Gordon one, which is telling.”

The Telegraph live blog reported what was going on live as well as what key twitterers and other bloggers were posting. It reports: “07.42 Krishnan Guru-Murthy of Channel 4 News on Twitter: ‘Is Nick Clegg the Susan Boyle of British politics?'”

The New Statesmen teamed up with Left Foot Forward, Labour List and Liberal Conspiracy to report via live web chat. Conservative Home was also reporting live as the debate took place. with their Tory Diary .

The Daily Mail had a live account blog , you could follow the debates on the Mirror’s micro site and the Spectator’s Coffee House blog.

The Sun has a micro site dedicated to the election and live blogging about last night’s debate.

Last night they brought in Frank Luntz the man Sir David Frost called “the nostrodamus of pollsters” , the creator of instant response technique of rating politicians, who gave his view as the Sun Panel used his system to judge the TV debate. There is a graph of the results on the Sun Election 2010 site.

Even the Americans took an interest with the Wall Street Journal hosting a live blog.

Meanwhile, the BBC College of Journalism has journalism experts to debating the debate.