Whether it was the bullying she endured in Saturday's debate or the now-famous humanizing "Hillary moment," New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's victory in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire defied polls and pundits.

Mrs. Clinton received 39 percent of the vote Tuesday to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's 37 percent, and women seem to have made the difference. She bested Mr. Obama despite the fact that he won the Iowa caucuses and had been projected to win in the Granite State's voting.

"Maybe I have liberated us to actually let women be human beings in public," Mrs. Clinton, the former first lady, reflected yesterday in a Fox News interview about the memorable moment of emotion the day before she gained her New Hampshire victory. "You know, we are. Let's be that."

A survey conducted for The Associated Press and television networks as voters left the polls Tuesday showed Mrs. Clinton won 47 percent of women voters, compared with 34 percent for Mr. Obama -- roughly reversing the trend in Iowa, where Mr. Obama won more of the women's vote.

"Fifty-seven percent of the people who voted in [Tuesday's] primary were women, and you have this late-breaking 20 percent of the people who make up their minds in the last day, and a larger proportion of them were women," said Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin & Marshall Keystone Poll and a Franklin & Marshall College political science professor in Lancaster. "There's clearly something going on with women voters."

Some women were upset with the toughness of attacks on Mrs. Clinton in Saturday's televised Democratic debate, where it seemed former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and the media were ganging up on her, Mr. Madonna said.

In an interview on NBC's "Today" show yesterday morning, Mrs. Clinton said things changed for her after the debate. "It was the first time that the leading candidates actually were asked some very pointed questions about what we stand for, what we've done to help other people, what our accomplishments are and what we want to do for the future," she said.

Coupled with the highly publicized "Hillary moment" in a New Hampshire coffee shop the day before the primary, when Mrs. Clinton got a little choked up explaining how she keeps pressing on in the campaign, the two appearances may have generated sympathy and won over women who were on the fence, Mr. Madonna said.

"People looked at her and said, 'How can this hip, young guy without any experience be trumping this competent and professionally qualified woman?' " Mr. Madonna said. "They were seeing in her their own struggles within their own fields of endeavor for the success that should come with competence and professionalism."

Women voters responded to the sexist framing of everything that happened, agreed Heather Arnet, executive director of Women and Girls Foundation, Downtown. She noted that after Mrs. Clinton defended her record in the televised debate as being an agent for change, the media portrayed it as an angry response. Then her vulnerable moment in the coffee shop was portrayed as an emotional breakdown.

"Women really responded to the double standard that became very clear -- that men are allowed to be strong and question each other's political records, but when she attempted to do it, it was suddenly not OK," Ms. Arnet said. "What we saw is women saying that 'it's not OK with us for you to treat her differently or hold her up to different standards,' and they realized, in their support, they could really make a difference.

"When suddenly the media were treating Hillary like a female candidate, that might have been what female voters needed to activate their loyalty," she said.

Allyson Lowe, executive director of the Pennsylvania Center for Women, Politics and Public Policy at Pittsburgh's Chatham University, doesn't believe that Mrs. Clinton's win is only or even mostly attributable to her debate performance and the "Hillary moment."

"I'd like to think voters are slightly more sophisticated than those two moments," she said. New Hampshire voters weren't willing to give the win to Mr. Obama just because the media and the polls -- and even some insiders in the Clinton camp -- said it was inevitable, she said.

But Ms. Lowe did note that the women who voted Tuesday shifted from Iowa's pattern. "In New Hampshire, women came out for Clinton in all age levels," she said. "In Iowa, older women went [for] Clinton, and younger women went [for] Obama."

Part of the shift may simply reflect that the New Hampshire primary was a much different process than the Iowa caucuses, where individuals had to meet, talk and openly take sides. Moreover, the two states' electorates are different.

"These two very discrete moments may have swayed some voters, but probably weren't the overwhelming, momentum-shifting deciding factors, but rather only pushed the margins," Ms. Lowe said. "They matter to some voters, but is it enough to explain multiple percentage points of difference? Maybe, maybe not."