"Sarah Palin has done for the gop what 10 male candidates, nearly two years and $300 million had failed to accomplish: she has boosted excitement, crowds and campaign coffers virtually overnight. She has lifted McCain in the polls, has put Obama into confusion and is living out a Cinderella story unlike any other in recent political history, though the ending is still a slipper of uncertainty. Even Palin seems astonished by it all. Gazing out at thousands from a platform in Sterling Heights, Mich., she shakes her head, dumbfounded for a moment as the crowd chants her name. Her mouth forms a word, mumbled silently to herself: "Wow," she says.
The Palin effect is already measurable. Since McCain tapped her in the days before the St. Paul, Minn., convention, national polls show that McCain has drawn even with Obama in most head-to-head surveys and pulled ahead in several. At the same time, white women have swung away from Obama by as much as 20 points. For months, McCain badly trailed in this group--a warning sign, since George W. Bush won among white women in 2004. But a new CNN/TIME/Opinion Research poll reveals McCain has opened up double-digit leads among this group in the swing states of Virginia, Missouri and Michigan. Charollet Schworer, a retired third-grade teacher from Kentucky who voted twice for Bill Clinton, traveled to Lebanon, Ohio, in a Windbreaker patterned with the American flag. "I sat there, tears rolling down my face, watching my TV," she says of Palin's speech at the Republican Convention. "I felt energized, truly energized for the first time."
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