• by September 12, 2007

With the first-ever Web-exclusive debate taking place at 11 a.m. today on Yahoo, Slate and The Huffington Post, a new survey has found that 22% of Americans expect to get news of the campaigns from such online debates. And, perhaps surprisingly, the demographic saying they'd be most likely to tune to such forums is the over-65 age group--at 27%.

The research of 1,000 Americans was conducted in August--just after the combo online/broadcast Democratic debate from YouTube and CNN--by Chicago's Synovate on behalf of ClipBlast. Future online debates include 11 candidate dialogues from MySpace and MTV starting Sept. 27, and the CNN/YouTube Republican showdown on Nov. 28.

Other findings on who's most likely to turn to the Web for Presidential debates include:

People earning between $25,000 and $50,000 (23%).

Households without children (24%), versus those with kids (18%).

People in the South and West (23% each)

Non-whites (28%) versus whites (21%).

"Organizing debates on the Video Web is anything but a novelty," said Gary Baker, CEO, ClipBlast. "It's an alternative that has emerged literally from nowhere to capture the public's imagination."

In addition to online debates, ClipBlast and Synovate studied all the other ways that Americans can get their 2008 Presidential campaign info.

They found that 29.5% of Americans will get their campaign news from online video and 7.5% from video bloggers.

Still, traditional media reigned as the overall choice among the 1,000 respondents for getting 2008 campaign news, with 86% planning to use TV and radio for info about the candidates, and 63.5% planning to use newspapers and magazines.