Was Diane Sawyer drunk during ABC News’ election coverage last night (November 6, 2012)?

A whole bunch of Twitter users seemed to think so and one smart Alec even set up a fictional ‘Drunk Diane Sawyer’ Twitter account, to post a series of fictional messages supposedly from the newsreader.

During last night’s election coverage, Sawyer could be heard slurring her words and rambled through her sentences, often making mistakes and stumbling over words, whilst her intonation was a little on the wild side. Many people commenting on Twitter assumed that Sawyer was drunk. @AlbieManzo posted a message that read “Diane Sawyer is waaaaaaassted right now!!!” whilst the official Twitter page for the band They Might Be Giants posted a message that said “And Diane Sawyer declares tonight's winner is... chardonnay!” And meanwhile, John Gruber said “Everyone, let's switch to ABC. I think Diane Sawyer is drunk.” A pal of Diane Sawyer’s however, refuted the claims and put her behavior down to exhaustion, telling the New York Daily News “She spent a number of sleepless nights preparing and rehearsing… It just caught up to her.” ABC’s officials have declined to comment.

It’s clearly not the first time that Diane Sawyer’s been associated with the demon drink, as a Drunk Diane Sawyer Twitter profile had previously been set up back in February but was only used for a few weeks. Perhaps whoever set it up indulged in a spot of method acting and got too drunk to remember the password. The new Drunk Diane Sawyer account (@DrnkDianeSawyer) featured a post this morning that simply read "hey guys wh o won i fell aslee?p"

Watch the footage and make up your own mind... was she drunk?