Equal time not all that equal

This, via Andrew Sullivan, is fascinating. What's particularly curious to me is that--despite all the pretense about having a 90-minute, eight person debate in order to give all of the contenders equal presence--the questions were issued and response times allocated in such a way as to allow the candidates to speak words in numbers that were, with a couple of exceptions, suspiciously proportional to their percentage positions in national polls:

• 1,872 - Senator Obama
• 1,766 - Senator Clinton
• 1,518 - Senator Edwards
• 1,281 - Governor Richardson
• 1,180 - Representative Kucinich
• 961 - Senator Biden
• 912 - Senator Dodd
• 753 - Senator Gravel