Among those for whom Palin was a factor, McCain won 56.6% of the vote.

Excluding those for whom Palin was a minor factor, M won 51.6%.

Among those who thought Palin was major factor, M lost but that loss constituted about one-third of one percent of the total vote.

Palin energized the base, brought in some libertarians and paleos and pushed M into his only lead. M then lost it because of his total ignorance of economics and stupid failure to oppose the highly unpopular Wall Street bailout.

The MSM crucified Palin mostly with a pack of lies. I can assure you that the whole ethics thing was a Goebbelsian pack of lies. And these clueless ones failed to notice that Biden didn’t know the constitutional duties of the vice-president but then chastised Plain for essentially correct view. Pathetic, scary stuff.

I voted for Barr/Root by the way.

In the national Election Day exit poll, fully 60% of voters said they did not consider her qualified to serve as president if necessary, while only 38% thought she would be ready to step in. Those figures were daunting enough, but new calculations from the exit poll provided by the NBC News political unit show that outside of the Republican base skepticism about Palin’s credentials reached even more imposing heights. While 74% of Republicans thought Palin was qualified, just 35% of independents and 9% of Democrats agreed

Then, he announced the economy was sound and badly mishandled the fiscal crisis caused by big government–he argued for more big government. That demoralized the base that had been energized by Palin and pissed off the libertarian swing vote, already lukewarm on McCain.

This was McCain’s loss.

The exit polls show little evidence that Palin hurt McCain. Those who hated Palin were hardcore Obama people anyway.