At John McCain's rally in the town of Lee's Summit, Mo., there were more people standing outside than were able to fit inside.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain, joined by his wife Cindy McCain and at right is his running mate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, at a campaign event in Cedarburg, Wisconsin on September 5, 2008.
(ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)That kind of crowd just hadn't been seen at McCain's events before last week's Republican convention.
Saturday in Colorado Springs, about 10,000 people waved American flags at McCain's rally in an airport hangar there, and Friday in the town of Cedarburg, Wis., there were more people crowding the main street and the surrounding blocks than the population of the tiny town.
These numbers seemed unfathomable to the campaign just last month.
So what happened?
Two words: Sarah Palin.
A typical McCain event before he announced the Alaska governor as his running mate averaged only about 1,000 people. Now 5,000 has been the low end of turnout in the last few days, and the biggest event last weekend drew about 11,000.
These are crowd sizes that are pretty typical for the Obama-Biden campaign, before and after the conventions. There were about 10,000 at an Obama-Biden event in Lancaster, Pa., last week, and more than 12,000 estimated at the Democrats' event in Battle Creek, Mich., earlier in the week.
