The joint effort by Yahoo, HuffingtonPost.com and Slate.com to offer a web based Presidential Debate for the Democratic Primaries has now attracted 1 million viewers over the course of 10 days : Democratic Candidate Mashup and Debate.

A first, the customizable online debate has drawn interest, especially from younger potential voters with stats showing view times were longer than most online videos:

• As of this weekend, 1.1 million people had clicked on the debates.
• Of those, 429,000 were between the ages of 18 and 34
• Organizers of the online debate say its audience is more engaged and that the format puts the content in the viewers’ hands.
• On average, each mashup viewer watched 4.4 video streams for a total of seven minutes
• Clips on the YouTube video-sharing site typically run two minutes or less.

Sure, online Presidential debates are in their pre-infancy, but the 1 million number is a bit lower than I had originally imagined. For example, I’m a bit surprised that Yahoo Search has not implemented a Yahoo Shortcut with links to the online debates for searches such as Barack Obama or Bill Richardson.