The 75-minute debate was attended by more than 500 people and involved six questions and a special section on minority government.

The panel judging the performance of the three political leaders was The Examiner's chief reporter Alison Andrews, political analyst Tony McCall, The Examiner's deputy editor Barry Prismall and The Examiner chief-of-staff Mark Baker.

All four judged areas like style-appearance, knowledge of issues, presentation-delivery and confidence.

Ms Andrews and Mr Prismall both awarded the debate to Mr McKim while Mr Baker and Mr McCall both thought that Mr Hodgman was the best performed.

However, when all the scores out of 10 points were totalled and then averaged out Mr McKim won with 7.18, Mr Hodgman 6.68 and Mr Bartlett 6.56.

FULL VOTING PLUS A SPECIAL EIGHT-PAGE LEADERS DEBATE SOUVENIR IN THE EXAMINER TUESDAY.