In years past, depending on the partisan winds, Pennsylvania has been a red state or a blue state, but on Tuesday it became the pink state, propelling women into four of the five statewide judicial spots on the ballot.

Precisely why women produced a near sweep in a state ranked 44th in its percentage of female officeholders was hard to gauge, but Susan Carroll, a political science professor at Rutgers University and senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics, had two theories.

One, she said, could be reaction to scandal. In Harrisburg, a widening probe of legislative corruption has roiled the political waters. The second is a general restiveness by voters unhappy in the wake of the 2005 pay raise ruckus and looking for change.

"There have been studies that showed that in terms of voter stereotypes, voters perceive women candidates as more honest," Ms. Carroll said. "The other thing that we know is that women candidates tend to do very well in a climate where voters are looking for change. They represent people that are outside the system."

Notable in the pattern from Tuesday's vote was the election of Republicans Cheryl Allen and Jackie Shogan to Superior Court in a year in which even Republican stalwarts had largely expected Democrats to sweep.

"The tide was much more favorable to the Democrats," said Kent Gates, a Republican consultant who managed Ms. Shogan's campaign. "The interesting thing about the fact that the female candidates did so well is that they weren't 1-2-3 on the ballot. You had to jump around."

The major jumping, judging from an analysis of the voting patterns, took place in a dozen counties where neither party holds a registration edge larger than 5 percent. With party-line voting patterns weakened, voters consistently jumped up and down the ballot, electing Republicans Allen and Shogan along with Democratic candidate Christine Donohue. This pattern held whether the vote was taking place in nominally Republican Somerset and Armstrong or Democratic Monroe, Carbon or Lehigh.

When votes were tallied, Debra Todd, a Pittsburgh Democrat, went onto one of the two seats on the state Supreme Court. The Republicans, Judge Allen and Ms. Shogan, went to Superior Court along with Democrat Ms. Donohue.

"In the course of the campaign a lot of people indicated this was the year of the woman, so to speak," said Ms. Donohue. "Probably there are many women out there who connected with myself and Cheryl Allen and Jackie Shogan, maybe because we were women. But I'd like to think there was a bit more to it."

Whether it was women voting for women or women and men voting for women wasn't readily apparent. What was clear, though, was that women were having a big day.

"I don't know about women voting for women, but when I was on the campaign trail I would hear from women and from men that we need more women on the bench and we need more women in government," said Ron Folino, a Democrat who ran fourth in the contest for three seats on Superior Court.

Judge Folino, who has 14 years on the bench in Allegheny County, speculated that given the lack of intensity in the judicial races, which rarely excite voters or generate widespread attention in the press, voters know little about the candidates until they enter the voting booth and cast about for some connection on which to cast a vote.

"You're looking for some kind of a connection. If it's not geographical, sometimes people will tell me they're looking for an ethnic connection, some people look for a gender connection," Judge Folino said.

Cheryl Allen, a sitting judge in Common Pleas Court in Allegheny County, cautioned against drawing too broad an inference from the success of women. While the possibility of voters factoring gender into their decision making is real, she said, she views it as only one of a range of factors.

"I don't believe that I won the race because I'm a woman, although I do know there are people who go into the voting booth and vote for women," she said. "I think it really goes beyond that. I worked very, very hard in this election and I have worked very hard for the past 17 years."

Assigned to family court, Judge Allen said she built up a statewide network of contacts, "so I guess I'm not willing to chalk it all up to just gender. But is that a component with some people? Yes, there is no question about it."

One hint into the workings of the process might be found in Montgomery County, ostensibly part of the Republican suburbs ringing Philadelphia, but which increasingly has been showing a streak of independence from partisan tradition. It delivered heavily for Democrat Harris Wofford in 1991, partly on the vote of Republican women unhappy with their party's stand on legal abortion. In 2004 it went for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, again a vote attributed to women rejecting the GOP on hot-button issues.

On Tuesday, it went Republican in selecting county commissioners, despite the presence of Ruth Damsker, a popular Democratic incumbent. In that race, however, Republican challengers turned property tax assessments into a potent issue, stripping away many of the same voters who departed the party line to support Democrats Judge Todd and Ms. Donohue for the state courts.

"You're dealing with almost a no-information election," said Ms. Carroll, the Rutgers professor. "Cues like race and ethnicity and gender will come into play because people are looking for a reason to vote for someone."

So far, it appears no one specifically polled statewide to put numbers to those theories.

"We did not ask that question," said Mr. Gates, the Shogan campaign manager. "But I'm sure that I'm going to the next time."