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The sense that Chuck Hagel performed poorly in his confirmation hearing has buoyed the outside groups that have been working to defeat his nomination, many of them financed by donors who refuse to identify themselves (and are not legally compelled to do so).

"It certainly has breathed new life into the effort,'' said Stuart Roy, a strategist with the American Future Fund, an anonymously financed group that has been running ads against him.

Mr. Roy said that he had fielded excited calls from donors on Thursday but he did not know whether that would translate into significant new donations.

But, like other groups involved in the effort, American Future Fund is already planning to run commercials until there is a vote. Mr. Roy said the back and forth of the hearings has provided potential new fodder for the next round of ads. "It's sort of like that first Obama debate today,'' he said, referring to Mr. Obama's lackluster first debate with Mitt Romney last year, which galvanized Mr. Romney's campaign.

Mr. Hagel's opponents said they were hopeful the hearing would embolden Republicans to threaten to block his nomination from coming to a vote, dissuade potential Republican supporters from defecting to his side, and push a handful of Democrats facing re-election to come out against him.

Most of the efforts so far have focused on Democrats, with ads, phone calls and mailings urging their constituents to call and write their offices urging no votes.

Some new developments in the campaign against Mr. Hagel have surfaced surrounding the hearing and its aftermath.

Richard Silverstein, the author of the liberal blog Tikun Olam, reported receiving an anti-Hagel robotic phone call from the Republican Jewish Coalition – financed in part by the casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson – at his home in Washington State, of all places. The state's United States senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, both Democrats, are not expected to defect.

And the Sunlight Foundation, a research organization that seeks to make government and politics more transparent, reports that another anonymously financed new group has entered the anti-Hagel realm, Secure America Now, which, it reports, was founded by Allen Roth, a political aide to Ron Lauder, the cosmetics heir and former ambassador to Austria who is active in Jewish causes.

The group is running an online petition drive to thwart Mr. Hagel and offers visitors to its Web site a pamphlet making their case against him.