My guess is that had they had even the slightest clue that so many people were going to be inspired by this ticket that they would have gone after a much larger venue.
When we got the tickets they told us that they had an overwhelming demand and had to cut off the amount given out.
Palin’s selection By John McCain along with the convention and his renewal to his reformist roots has this headed to for being a very tightly contested election.
As a Coloradan - I'll be doing everything I can to see that he wins it.
John McCain was very recently meeting with groups of people in cafe's to try and sell his message.
Sarah Palin is a phenomenon and I don't think even the McCain people have really come to terms with it yet.
That rings true. As we entered, there was a gigantic sound system just to the edge of the hangar that was very painful to the ears to walk by, even 100 ft away. We had to walk WAY back to find a spot from which we could see the podium, and it was so far away that people at the podium were barely visible. Yet by the time the rally started, so many more people had poured in behind us that we were only at about the halfway point, depth-wise. So the latest arrivers were maybe twice the distance from the sound system as we. I could always hear the words, though I sometimes had to cup my ears. But I felt really sorry for people far behind us who obviously could not hear very much. Two or three times, we heard chants from behind, saying things like "turn it up!" or "we can't hear" or similar!
So yes, I think the organizers were blindsided by the actual numbers that showed up. I know that in N. Colorado, there were so many more people wanting to go than there were available tickets, that the GOP groups passing them out were giving single tickets to groups of people to share, wherever possible.