Did you spend most of your time in Fairbanks or Anchorage? If so, that would have a lot to do with the sort of responses you got to questions about Palin. Big cities are full of liberals and RINO squishes wherever you go.
Fairbanks
Denali
Anchorage
Ketchikan
Skagway
Juneau
No town in Alaska is anywhere close to “big” population wise
Fairbanks metro is 100k peeps, Anchorage metro 380k, Juneau (state capital) 32k
Even in Indiana we have suburbs that size.