ST. PAUL – Sarah Palin’s speech was the biggest draw of the Republican convention, nearly matching the number of people who watched Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama last week.

More than 37.2 million people watched coverage of the Republican National Convention’s third night, where the star attraction was Palin, the party’s vice presidential candidate and current governor of Alaska.

Palin won far more viewers than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) or Obama running mate Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), who addressed the crowd on day two and day three of the Democratic convention.

It may be too early to tell how significant a bounce Palin or the GOP convention will give Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), but a new CBS News poll found McCain and Obama are tied, with each getting the support of 42 percent of voters.

That poll was taken from Sept. 1 to 3, and contrasts with a CBS poll last week that gave McCain and Biden an eight-percent lead over the McCain-Palin ticket.

Palin also improved her own stock according to before and after polls by SurveyUSA.
 
Three out of five respondents gave her an ‘A’ for her speech, and more than half now see her as an asset to McCain’s campaign.
 
SurveyUSA polled 1,200 voters on Wednesday before Palin’s speech and then again afterward on Thursday.
 
Fifty-five percent of respondents called her an asset after the speech, compared to 49 percent before. Among independents, that number rose from 43 percent to 56 percent.
 
The later poll shows Palin is seen as more of an asset to her ticket than Biden.

Despite a laundry list of reporting on various less-than-positive aspects of Palin’s background, just 24 percent now see her as a liability for McCain. Half of voters see Biden as an asset, and 27 percent called him a liability.

This story was updated at 6:52 p.m.