That still doesn't explain the part later in the post where you say 'prior to the most recent elections, the closest anyone had come...', though. Even if you arbitrarily reduce 'the Anglo world' to just the UK and US, Thatcher still stands (and just for the heck of it, we should mention Geraldine Ferraro who reached the same position as Palin, if you don't start comparing the scale of their respective defeats).