To drive that home, Alan Keyes got to 27% by

- running against a charismatic Obama

- being a last minute insert when Jack Ryan was caught in a sex scandal (who was already fighting an uphill battle with sharing a last name with the corrupt former governor)

- being a carpetbagger (he didn't live in Illinois at any point until running for senate)

- running as a hard-line social conservative in a state where the GOP is torn between appealing to suburban Chicago fiscal conservatives and downstate Illinois social conservatives

And being a person of colour, which is tough in the "hard-line social conservative" lane, where you want to pick up voters who don't like that. And the crazy.