Anyone want to guess at his percentage if he had say, picked Huckabee for VP? Or Lieberman? Or Giuliani?
I can't tell you that. But I can tell you this: Our country is registered 60% Democrat. When McCain alone was on the ticket, local GOP headquarters was less than 10% capacity with volunteers. They couldn't give away lawn signs. When Sarah joined the ticket, they couldn't get in lawn signs fast enough and the volunteers came out of the woodwork. Other than the full-time kid who was hired by the McCain campaign, everyone we talked to or worked with there had volunteered because of Sarah.
Joe Biden couldn't get 500 people to take free tickets to a well-advertised event in the middle of the day at the local high school gym. It was so pathetic that the media covering the event wouldn't even show crowd shots: only shots of the amen chorus behind the speaker and one-on-one interviews after the event. Most of us don't think he drew even close to the 500 claimed.
Sarah's tickets to a 6 a.m. airport rally were gone one day after the visit was announced. Crowd shots looked close to the 3000 attendees claimed. McCain carried our county by 58%, largely because he had the sense to stay away and send Sarah.