I like Palin, but you are giving her too much credit here.
I live in GA, and IMHO, Palin’s impact on this race was minimal. Chambliss’ polling lead the day before the elction was based upon similar voting turnout as the main election. We know that didn’t happen. The factors that helped Chambliss were:
1. Martin allowing himself to be tied to Obama.
2. A Democratic base that was not enthused about comming out to vote for Martin.
3. A Republican base that was fired up to prevent the Dems from getting a 60 seat majority and handing total power to the Dems/Obama.
4. A host of Republicans (including Palin) comming into the state to Support Chambliss. IMHO (again), Huckabee’s visit to the state probably did as much or more to help Chambliss as anyone else (because it was coordinated with a major GA talk show, Neil Boortz on WSB, and the Fair Tax coalition, which enjoys more support in GA than any other state by a pretty large margin.)
I like Palin, but there is no way you can attribute the entire bump to here.
2. A Democratic base that was not enthused about comming out to vote for Martin.Which was entirely predictable to anyone with at least one eye, one ear, and one brain.