AKMudRaker went to both. His accounts of both match what Alaska Daily News had to say about the the Palin rally and what the pictures show of the Obama rally.
Attendance:
Plain Rally ~ 250
Obama Rally ~ 1,200
Approximately 1200 rally-goers, lots of homemade signs, voter registration, postcard writing, live band, t-shirt/button sales with long lines, lots of families and dogs (some with signs), outside on the Park Strip.
According to Wesley Low at the Alaska Daily News:
Todd (Palin) told the crowd of roughly 300, who didn't nearly fill the cavernous meeting hall, that he'd just flown in from Denver. And that he thought his wife won Thursday's debate with Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden.
The applause could almost be heard across the room.
You might think this was a before-action picture, but if you follow the red arrow you will notice that there is a speaker at the podium. This was, in fact, the turnout.
Oh, heck, let's step back and get a good look...
You can't tell me that the volunteers and staff at the McCain-Palin Anchorage office went through the trouble of setting up all those chairs unless they planned to fill them. Only a fool would setup more chairs than necessary for a political event (at the Biden event I volunteered at, we were scrounging extra chairs at the last minute and filled the standing-room-only area above the bleachers). You leave a lot of empty seats, and some wiseacre is likely to take a picture that looks like this:
Which can only mean that the McCain campaign thought they would fill the hall and were unable to.
