WASHINGTON — When John McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate in a daring political gamble five weeks ago, many suggested it was a brazen attempt to lure women - in particular, angry Hillary Clinton supporters - away from Barack Obama.

It was a typical McCain roll of the dice that appeared to have worked beautifully for a brief moment. In the days following the Republican National Convention and Palin's spirited speech at the event, the party claimed it had snagged one in five disgruntled Clinton backers who were furious at the way they felt the Obama campaign had treated their candidate during the Democratic primary.

Little more than a month later, however - and after a series of near-disastrous Palin interviews with CBS's Katie Couric - polls are suggesting women are flocking back in large numbers to Obama.

Women were preparing to watch closely on Thursday night when Palin was set to square off against Joe Biden in a hotly anticipated debate expected to draw more viewers than those who tuned in last week to watch the presidential showdown between Obama and McCain.

"I just want to see if she can connect with people again, if the people handling her and coaching her are finally going to let her be herself again," Brooke Anderson, 24, a journalism graduate student at DePaul University in Chicago, said Thursday.

"I'm almost feeling bad for her because I don't think she's been doing the best that she can do."

Some female observers have been far more damning toward the self-styled "hockey mom."

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker even urged Palin to drop out of the race last week in a column that was praised by others on the right. "Do it for your country," wrote Parker, a onetime vocal Palin cheerleader.

Emily Bazelon wrote on Slate.com that she fears Palin's poor performance on the national stage could even set women back in political spheres.

"Laugh at the Tina Fey parodies that make Palin ridiculous just by quoting her verbatim. And then cry," she wrote.

"When Palin tanks, it's good for the country if you want Obama and Biden to win, but it's bad for the future of women in national politics .... Palin is the most prominent woman on the political stage at the moment. By taking unprepared hesitancy and lack of preparation to a sentence-stopping level, she's yanking us back to the old assumption that women can't hack it at these heights."

Anderson, from Deerfield Beach, Fla., disagrees.

"I don't think she's set things back for us because I think she has it in her, but the Katie Couric interviews have been really damaging," she said.

"It's like she's been prepped by all the neo-cons, and they've been pumping her full of stats and facts and figures and not allowing her to just be herself."

"It's like she's answering bad essay questions that she doesn't know the answers to, and she's over-thinking everything and how her responses are going to be perceived by the media."