Rachel Maddow looked as if she was about to leap in the air with excitement. The newly minted MSNBC host was crouched on a swivel chair, her feet propped underneath her, gleefully contemplating the day's sudden turn of events.

Bill Wolff, her executive producer, had just walked into her office with the latest news: Sen. John McCain was suspending his presidential campaign to rush to Washington and work on the Wall Street bailout.

"No more campaign events for the whole week; he's just going to be on Capitol Hill?" Maddow asked incredulously.

It was the kind of unexpected development that delights Maddow, whose enthusiasm for all things political has helped make her a breakout star on MSNBC. Just nine months after joining the cable news network as a political analyst, the 35-year-old outspoken liberal has her own hourlong program, which airs after "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," the network's top-rated show.

An animated dissection of political events and offbeat news, "The Rachel Maddow Show" has debuted with a strength that surprised even MSNBC executives. An average of 1.64 million viewers have tuned in since the show launched Sept. 8, more than double the number who watched the same hour in the first eight months of the year.

In her second week on the air, Maddow beat CNN's "Larry King Live," a cable news institution -- quite a feat for a self-described television novice and former AIDS activist who doesn't even own a TV.

It has been the best launch of a show on MSNBC, which for years trailed far behind Fox News and CNN. But Maddow's early success coincides with a period of uncomfortable scrutiny of the cable news channel. Powered in large part by Olbermann's unremitting attacks on the Bush administration, MSNBC has remade itself as a destination for brash, provocative commentary, often from the left end of the political spectrum.

That strategy has boosted ratings and brought charges of bias. The promotion of Maddow has only reinforced perceptions that MSNBC is partisan.

"Do we have a point of view with our shows?" MSNBC President Phil Griffin said. "Definitely. But we've established ourselves as a news organization, NBC News, as uncompromised and as good as anybody in the country."

For her part, Maddow says she doesn't think of her show as a platform to espouse her political views.

"I certainly have beliefs and opinions, just like anybody does," she said. "But I don't have an agenda. ... I think of this as a chance to talk about the news on TV for an hour each day. How awesome is that?"

Some of her interests don't fit neatly within the political spectrum. Maddow is something of a military history buff, in regards to its role in U.S. politics (she's writing a book on the subject). She calls herself "a real rah-rah patriotic American."

"I get very misty about the national anthem," she said.

Still, there's no question that Maddow's unrestrained indignation at Republican policies is a big part of her appeal.

On a recent night, in discussing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's suggestion that U.S. officials have delayed withdrawing troops because of domestic presidential politics, she said, "If you feel like your hair is on fire right now, you're not alone." (Matea Gold, Los Angeles Times)

Far more people watched Thursday's vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin on television than watched the first presidential debate.

Nielsen Media Research says preliminary ratings in the nation's 55 biggest markets were up 42 percent from the same measurement of John McCain and Barack Obama's first encounter last Friday.

Nielsen's specific estimate of how many people watched Thursday night will be out later, but indications are it will be one of the most-watched political debates ever. (Associated Press)

Barack Obama's tendency through the Democratic primaries to perform better in exit polls than he actually does at the ballot box has some media organizations nervous heading into Election Night.

Television networks want to avoid having their performance become an issue for the third straight presidential election. Their political experts hope that experience gained during the primaries will help things run smoothly Nov. 4.

ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and The Associated Press pool resources to conduct exit polls in select precincts, hoping to glean information about why people vote the way they do and to help predict a winner or loser. A combination of actual vote counts and exit polls is generally used to "call" a state for one candidate or another.

Exit polls frequently overstated Obama's vote during the primaries by as much as 3 percent.

Well-educated and young voters are more likely to agree to fill out an exit-poll survey, and both these groups have tended to favor Obama, the experts said.

Enthusiastic voters are also more likely to seek out pollsters, or at least not go out of their way to avoid them. That was true about Obama during the primaries, just as it was for Republican Pat Buchanan during the 1992 New Hampshire primary, said Kathleen Frankovic, CBS News director of surveys.

It was the exit polls' overstatement of John Kerry's support in 2004 that caused problems for the networks, particularly when the first wave of results were leaked on the Web.

That led to a "quarantine room" reform that will be in place this year; the people with access to poll results are locked away until at least 5 p.m., giving them time to check for any problems and keeping the early numbers from conveying false information and possibly affecting turnout.

The problems were more serious in 2000, when networks prematurely "called" Florida, and thus the election, for George Bush. It led to a congressional investigation into their practices.

For the Obama-McCain contest, there's concern about whether some voters will say they voted for Obama but, for racial reasons, actually didn't.

Frankovic said this was a real issue for pollsters years ago, but studies show it has virtually gone away.

The false reporting was more pronounced when voters were actually interviewed by pollsters, but the current exit poll is a paper survey that voters fill out in private. It was only in the Northeast that Todd said he saw false reporting problems during the primaries. (David Bauder, AP)