How the 2007 CNN YouTube Debates Let Voters Ask Questions

Most voters never get to ask a presidential candidate anything. In 2007, the CNN YouTube debates tried to change that by letting ordinary people record a 30 second question at home, upload it, and watch it play on a giant screen in front of the candidates.

It looks quaint now, when every candidate answers voters on livestreams and short clips. But those two debates were the first time a major network handed part of a presidential debate to user-uploaded video, and the format left habits that campaigns and broadcasters still use. Here is how the CNN YouTube debates worked, what they got right, and where the hype outran the reality.

How the CNN YouTube debates worked

CNN and YouTube announced the partnership in mid 2007, when YouTube was barely two years old and had just been bought by Google. The rules were simple. Anyone could record a short video question, upload it to a dedicated YouTube channel, and hope it was picked.

The Democratic debate came first, on July 23, 2007, at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, with Anderson Cooper moderating. Roughly 3,000 videos were submitted. CNN producers selected a few dozen and played them during the two hour broadcast, with Cooper following up when answers drifted.

The Republican debate followed on November 28, 2007, in St. Petersburg, Florida. It had been delayed after several leading candidates hesitated to commit, partly because of the tone of some Democratic debate questions. When it went ahead, the submission count was higher, close to 5,000 videos.

In both cases, a key detail often gets lost: YouTube users did not pick the questions. CNN's editorial team did. Viewers could watch and rate submissions on the channel, but the final list was a newsroom decision.

The questions people still remember

The submissions that cut through were the ones that used video as video, not as a talking head reading a card.

• The snowman. A claymation-style snowman asked about global warming and his own future. It was silly, it was memorable, and it got a serious climate answer on air. It also gave critics an easy line about the format being a gimmick.
• Personal stakes on camera. Several questioners showed their circumstances directly: a woman removing a wig to talk about cancer treatment and health insurance, families raising questions about the war in Iraq, voters holding up items that illustrated their point.
• The guns question. In the Democratic debate, a Michigan voter holding a rifle he called his "baby" asked candidates about gun policy, a moment that showed how much a visual prop shapes how a question lands.

What these had in common was specificity. A person, a place and one concrete problem. That lesson turned out to be more durable than the debate format itself, and it is the same principle behind how modern teams cut one speech into fifty clips, each built around a single moment.

What the format changed for campaign video

The CNN YouTube debates did not transform elections on their own. They did shift a few expectations that stuck.

Voters as video producers

Before 2007, the idea of a voter producing a piece of broadcast content was mostly limited to call-in shows. After the debates, user-generated questions became a regular feature: town hall formats on cable news started inviting social media submissions, and later debates took questions from Facebook, Google search trends and other platforms.

Campaigns watching YouTube

Campaign staff in 2007 had to monitor the submission channel the way they would monitor a newspaper. That habit of tracking what ordinary users upload and share grew into the rapid response video teams that every serious campaign now runs.

Debates as clip material

The debates were built to be chopped up and shared. The questions lived on YouTube before broadcast, and the answers were uploaded after. This made the debate an online event spread across days, not a two hour broadcast that vanished the next morning.

A counter-take: the format was less democratic than it looked

The common story is that the CNN YouTube debates handed the microphone to the people. I think that oversells it, for three reasons.

First, curation stayed entirely in professional hands. A few thousand submissions were reduced to a few dozen by CNN producers using the same news judgment that shapes any debate. The questions were more colorful, but the gatekeeping was the same.

Second, the submitters were not a cross-section of voters. In 2007 you needed a camera, a decent internet connection, comfort with uploading video, and the free time to produce something worth airing. That skewed younger, more online and more motivated than the average primary voter.

Third, novelty rewarded performance. A cartoon snowman got airtime partly because it was a cartoon snowman. Plenty of thoughtful, plain questions from people sitting at kitchen tables never made the cut because they did not look interesting on a big screen.

None of this makes the experiment a failure. It does mean the real legacy is a production technique, not a shift in who held power over the questions. If you want to see where voter influence actually grew, the online organizing of the same cycle, covered in our piece on how MyBarackObama.com turned volunteers into organizers, did more to put tools in ordinary hands.

How to watch the 2007 debates today with a critical eye

Many clips from both debates are still online, often as individual questions rather than full broadcasts. If you are studying them for a class or a campaign project, a few habits help.

1. Find the full broadcast where you can. Single clips strip out Cooper's follow-ups, which often mattered more than the original question.
2. Check the date and source. Re-uploads sometimes mix footage from the two debates or from later town halls. Our guide on how to check a viral campaign clip before you share it applies to archive footage too.
3. Count the question types. Note how many questions were policy, how many were personal, and how many were mainly visual stunts. The ratio tells you a lot about producer priorities.
4. Compare answers to stump speeches. Candidates often pivoted to rehearsed lines. Spotting that pivot is a useful skill for any later debate.

Why the experiment still matters for online video

The specific format faded quickly. By the 2012 cycle, networks had moved on to taking questions through Facebook and Twitter, which were cheaper to process and did not require anyone to film anything. Still, the 2007 debates set a template that short form political video runs on today: one face, one problem, under a minute, framed for a screen. Every campaign ad built around a single voter testimonial owes something to those 30 second uploads.

For students of campaign media, the debates are also a clean case study of how a platform partnership works. YouTube got legitimacy as a news venue. CNN got a younger audience and a fresh format. Candidates got a slightly less predictable night. Voters got a small, curated window. Judging who gained the most is a good exercise in itself.

Frequently asked questions

When were the CNN YouTube debates held?

The Democratic debate was held on July 23, 2007, in Charleston, South Carolina. The Republican debate took place on November 28, 2007, in St. Petersburg, Florida. Both were moderated by Anderson Cooper.

How many questions were submitted to the YouTube debates?

Around 3,000 video questions were submitted for the Democratic debate and close to 5,000 for the Republican one. Only a few dozen were aired in each debate. CNN producers made the final selection.

Why was the snowman question famous?

The animated snowman asking about global warming became a symbol of the format, both of its creativity and of the criticism that it turned debates into entertainment. It drew a serious answer on climate policy. It was also widely mocked, which made it one of the most replayed clips of the night.