Rootygate! Amazing Twitter reaction to Abbott winning over the SkyNews audience

As you may or may not know, both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition met separately with a group of undecided voters picked by the Galaxy polling company tonight for a "townhall" style meeting. This was broadcast on the SkyNews channel. Ms Gillard appeared first and then Mr Abbott. Cleverly, Mr Abbott didn't sit on a chair on the stage as Ms Gillard had done, but stood and addressed the assembled people from the floor. The West Australian's Andrew Tillett @andrewtillett tweeted "Abbott had that won as soon as he walked off the stage onto the floor of the room." The clear consensus is that Abbott was the favourite of the crowd by night's end, though SBS's Karen Middleton @KarenMMiddleton noted that the questioning of Ms Gillard was more aggressive, with Fairfax's Latika Bourke @latikambourke commenting "As a Sydney girl at heart, I'm not surprised JG was shown more hostility due to NSW Labor fatigue etc." And the Left on Twitter are positively howling. You can check it out on Twitter by searching on the #rooty hashtag http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23rooty - the event was held in the western suburbs of Sydney at the Rooty Hill RSL. No, seriously, that's what the place is called! There are screams that Galaxy had stacked the audience, with tweets of ROOTYGATE! Interestingly, one tweeter with obvious connexions to the Labor Party retweeted two virtually identical tweets, each from a different person, claiming to "confirm" that three people in the crowd were "actors" associated with the Liberal Party. Anyway, all hilarious good fun.

Posted via email from Garth's posterous