Saturday Night Live parodies of Sarah Palin a physical resemblance between comedian Tina Fey and Palin. Fey had decided she would play Palin after her daughter saw a picture of the Alaskan governor and mistook Palin for her mother. Viewers began to speculate who would play Palin on "SNL" during the run up to the November 4 presidential election. Days before the broadcast of the sketch, "SNL" executive producer Lorne Michaels said "there are [ongoing] discussions" about Fey playing Palin. On September 13, 2008, NBC announced that Fey would appear in the thirty-fourth-season premiere. The first sketch, "A Nonpartisan Message from Governor Sarah Palin & Senator Hillary
Sarah Palin among conservatives as well as liberals following her nomination. At the same time, Palin became more popular than John McCain among Republicans. One month after McCain announced Palin as his running mate, she was viewed both more favorably and unfavorably among voters than her opponent, Delaware Senator Joe Biden. A plurality of the television audience rated Biden's performance higher at the 2008 vice-presidential debate. Media outlets repeated Palin's statement that she "stood up to Big Oil" when she resigned after 11 months as the head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, due to abuses she witnessed involving other