WASHINGTON — The Republican presidential hopefuls will get a taste of what their Democratic counterparts faced over the summer when they answer viewer-submitted questions at a CNN/ YouTube debate tomorrow night in Florida.

Judging by a sampling of the more than 4,900 submissions posted on the popular video-sharing site, the questions range from the earnest to the whacky, just as they did for the Democrats.

There is a New Mexico man who tells the candidates that voters don’t care about their Facebook or MySpace pages but want to know how they are going to address poverty in America. There is also a woman dressed in a bright yellow chicken suit and waving an American flag. She asks the hopefuls if they would support her for vice president and then spends the next 15 seconds professing her love for the debate’s moderator, Anderson Cooper.

For all the 30-second clips that CNN editors may quickly choose to discard, some questioners found ways to challenge the candidates in the areas where they are most vulnerable. Mark Rose of Las Vegas recited a list of issues on which Mitt Romney has changed his position over the years before asking: “Am I looking at a candidate with a core of deeply held beliefs or am I looking at plastic man?”

Another questioner who says he has always voted Democratic tells Mayor Giuliani that he likes him because he is a “moderate,” and asks him to describe areas in which he holds more centrist views that would appeal to other Democrats and independents. The query would be tricky for the former mayor, who has downplayed his more moderate stances in an effort to woo the conservative Republican base.

CNN officials say the rules will be the same for the Republicans as they were for the Democrats, and they expect to air about 40 viewer-submitted questions over the course of the two-hour debate, which begins at 8 p.m.

The debate will also test whether the leading candidates have the stomach to criticize each other as harshly face-to-face as they have been doing on the campaign trail in recent days.

Messrs. Giuliani and Romney have been battling over their respective records in New York and Massachusetts for days. Of late, they have even tried linking each other to the chief GOP nemesis, Senator Clinton. Mr. Giuliani has said the health care plan Mr. Romney enacted as governor is similar to the one Mrs. Clinton has proposed nationwide, while Mr. Romney yesterday trotted out a newspaper article from 1994 in which the mayor is quoted as praising the plan for universal coverage that Mrs. Clinton unveiled as first lady. Fred Thompson and Michael Huckabee, each courting social conservatives, have criticized each other on abortion and immigration, while Senator McCain of Arizona has assailed Mr. Giuliani for a lack of experience on national security.