Last year's winner of the awards' outstanding achievement prize - introduced in 2003, a year after the death of Irish actor Richard Harris - was Daniel Day-Lewis.
Jean-Daniel Levy, head of political polling at Harris Interactive, said before the debate that it would be "very, very difficult" at this point to change the course of the election.
Skipper Daniel Vettori was caught in the slips off Ryan Harris for 46 from the fifth ball of the day and after a bright and breezy 24 from Brendon McCullum, the last five wickets went down for only nine runs.