You have to say that Governor Palin looks very good for a mother of five. Attractiveness is a factor in politics - Obama’s good looks certainly assisted him, and Palin’s assist her.

There was a study in Germany a while back about attractiveness being a significant factor in electability. Can’t find it now, but this study in Finland found:

    Evaluations of beauty explain success in real elections better than evaluations of competence, intelligence, likability, or trustworthiness. The beauty premium is larger for female candidates, in contrast to findings in previous labor-market studies.

They also found that men tend to vote for male and female candidates equally, but women tend to favour female candidates over male candidates. In other words being a woman was an electoral advantage.