Sarah Palin teased yet another audience about whether she will seek the presidency in 2012, but the US conservative powerhouse insisted that if she did run, she would be “in it to win it”.

Ms Palin, the Republican 2008 vice presidential candidate, told several hundred people at a fundraiser for a Christian school in Pennsylvania that she would need to take “prayerful consideration” of a White House bid and acknowledged such a move would require “great sacrifices” from her family.

“I wouldn’t do it just to shake it up,” she said when asked whether she was considering a Presidential bid in two years’ time.

“I’d be in it to win it. I would certainly have to put a lot more thought in it than what I could give you today in terms of an answer.”

Her comments echoed those made by Democrat Hillary Clinton – the woman who to date made the most serious bid for the presidency – in January 2007, when she announced her candidacy by telling Americans “I’m in. And I’m in to win.”

Mrs Clinton ended up narrowly losing the Democratic Party nomination to Barack Obama, who appointed her secretary of state after he became President.

Ms Palin has emerged as a kingmaker of sorts, endorsing several candidates – many of them women aligned with the conservative anti-establishment Tea Party movement – who won in last week’s mid-term elections that saw Republicans regain control of the House of Representatives from Democrats.

Analysts and political followers have long wondered whether she would seek the White House, and in late October she said she would run “if there is nobody else to do it”.