GOFFSTOWN – For nearly a week, Saint Anselm College will become the epicenter of Presidential politics as hundreds of journalists, campaign supporters and undecided voters flock to campus for repeat debates among Democratic and Republican candidates.

The debates will begin at 7 p.m. and last two hours, on Sunday for the Democrats and Tuesday for the Republicans. CNN and WMUR, both organizers of the debate, will be airing the debate live each evening.

Months of meticulous planning have gone into making the first-ever twin debates a success, organizers say. Since January, the four sponsoring institutions - CNN, WMUR, the New Hampshire Union Leader and Saint Anselm - have been coordinating decisions about things big and small, from admission criteria for candidates to where their campaign staff can park.

This week, final preparations are under way for the debates. CNN staffers started trickling in earlier this week, to begin the transformation of the Thomas Sullivan Arena into a debate hall, with seating for 700 people and a debate stage unlike any other.

"It's going to be like the Academy Awards of Presidential debates," said Andrew Vrees, news director for WMUR.

CNN kick offs its debate coverage on Sunday at 11 a.m. with the two-hour "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer." A number of CNN programs will be airing live from Sunday through Tuesday, including "The Situation Room." Blitzer will also be the moderator for both debates.

Lou Dobbs will head up coverage immediately prior to the debates, while Larry King and Anderson Cooper will anchor the post-debate shows each night.

The debates themselves will be broadcast live on CNN, CNN.com, WMUR, WMUR.com and UnionLeader.com. Afterward, CNN is taking what organizers say is the unprecedented step of making debate footage available to other media for their virtually unrestricted use during the 2008 election cycle.

There will be several added features on the WMUR Web site before, during and after the debates, according to Vrees. "One of the coolest things we're doing is called real-time response," Vrees said.

During the debates, he said the station will have 25 undecided voters in its studios who will press a button each time a candidate says something they like or don't like. The results will be displayed on a graph, tracking how candidates are doing as the debates progress.

As the presidential candidates go toe-to-toe with each other in the Sullivan Arena, the media, likely more than 400 of them, will be watching from the Carr Center on campus. Afterward, the James Carvilles and Mary Matalins of 2008 will mingle with the press in the Stoutenburgh Gym, known as the "spin" room.