Was it only a year ago that, on the day after an election, Republican State Chairman Robert A. Gleason Jr. said he had never felt so glum about GOP prospects in Pennsylvania?

Yesterday, after Republicans had won at least six of the seven statewide races on Tuesday's ballot, Gleason was in a far happier mood.

"I think we're back in the game," he said.

After years of Democratic gains, the GOP regained some of its swagger in Philadelphia's suburbs. That, combined with dismal turnout in Democrat-rich Philadelphia, gave Republicans perhaps their best showing in a decade.

But statewide, only judgeships were at stake. There was no race for president or governor or U.S. senator. So the question was: Did the result mean anything for the future? Or was it just a blip in an off-year election, when hardly a quarter of registered voters bothered to turn out?

"I'd say it was a warning," said Christopher Borick, a political scientist at Muhlenberg College. "It should send shivers down the spines of a lot of Democrats."

Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by 1.2 million in Pennsylvania. Yet Republican Jane Orie Melvin beat Democrat Jack Panella by a ratio of 53-47 for the open seat on the state Supreme Court.

Republicans won at least three of the four open seats on Superior Court, one level below the Supreme Court. A recount may be required for the final seat.

Republican and Democratic candidates split the two contested seats on Commonwealth Court, the state's other intermediate appeals bench.

Notably, women made up five of the seven sure winners in the appellate-court battles - this in a state which, except for judges, has elected only four women to any statewide office.

"Women have tended to do well in judicial races in the past number of years," said Leslie Gromis Baker, campaign manager for former Gov. Tom Ridge. "I think voters tend to feel that perhaps women are more compassionate."

The key to GOP success on Tuesday was in Southeastern Pennsylvania. The result was just the opposite of the pattern in recent years, when the region was crucial to victories by President Obama, Gov. Rendell, and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. - all Democrats.

Though Panella won in just nine of the state's 67 counties, he still might have beaten Orie Melvin, if he had done as well as those other Democrats did in Philadelphia and its suburbs.

He got about the same percentage of city votes as Obama received last year. He just didn't get the turnout.

Obama won Philadelphia by 458,000 votes. Panella won it by 68,000. That gave him no fat to make up for the lean times he encountered in many other areas of the state.

In the suburbs, Panella won Montgomery County narrowly, but he lost by healthy margins in Bucks, Chester, and Delaware Counties.

Overall in those counties, Orie Melvin won by 26,895 votes.

Republicans traditionally vote with more consistency than Democrats in low-profile elections. That trend was magnified Tuesday by what both sides saw as motivation among some Republicans to send a message to Harrisburg and Washington.

Pam Rickenbach of Berwyn spoke for many when she said, "I'm very upset with the Democratic Party right now, especially what Obama is doing. He is destroying our country."

Gleason said many voters were fired up by the 101-day state budget impasse this year, and gave credit to Senate Republicans for resisting the income-tax hike Rendell proposed to help close the budget gap. "The Democrats' tax-and-spend policies, I think people have had enough of that," he said.

T.J. Rooney, the Democratic state chairman, agreed that national and state issues played a role on Tuesday.

"We would all have our heads in the sand if we did not acknowledge that there is a feeling of uneasiness out there," he said. "The Democrats govern, so therefore we were held accountable."

Rooney said other factors - including the quality of each party's get-out-the-vote efforts - also played roles. He conceded that Republicans may have out-hustled his party. "They probably put more into their field effort than we did," he said.

In Delaware County, the Republicans won the two open seats on the county council. In Chester County, they won the four row offices up for election. In Bucks County, they won the open-seat election for district attorney.

Only in Montgomery County did Democrats have some reason to crow. For the first time in more than a century, they won a seat on Common Pleas Court. But it took Lois Murphy to do it. A former two-time candidate for Congress, she has spent millions of dollars over the years to make herself known.

The six other Democrats running for the county bench lost.

Contact staff writer Tom Infield at 610-313-8205 or tinfield@phillynews.com.