People's questions a refreshing change for US poll debate

Democratic candidates in the 2008 US presidential race launched a new, more direct and livelier form of political debate last night.

YouTube, the video-sharing website that is only two-and-half years old, joined CNN to allow a cross-section of Americans to question the candidates in 30-second video clips.

In the fourth of the Democratic debates, the tired format of journalists putting the questions to the eight candidates was finally dispensed with. YouTube provided 50 questions from more than 2,000 videos sent in, ranging from a cancer survivor to the father of a soldier killed in Iraq and a man cradling his "baby", a gun.