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
2008 United States presidential election in Alaska perform better in 2008 than Democratic nominee John Kerry did in 2004. The presence of popular Governor Sarah Palin on the ticket as the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee appeared to help. The McCain-Palin ticket received just a slightly smaller percentage of Alaskan votes than did Bush-Cheney in 2004 despite the nation's swinging Democrat by nearly 5% (48.3% to 52.9%). Polls from April until August indeed showed John McCain with a slim lead, with one poll taken in early August showing Obama five points ahead. However, from when Sarah Palin was announced as McCain's running mate on August 29, polls