In a push to raise money for their candidates, Democrats hope Wisconsin will be for them what the health care overhaul was for Republicans in last year?s midterm elections: a galvanizing force for their base, and an example of overreaching that will win them crucial independent voters, not just in Wisconsin but also in Congressional races and the presidential election next year.

They point to polls showing that the same level of intensity that helped Republicans campaigning against health care is now behind Democrats on the issue of collective bargaining. Gov. Scott Walker?s refusal to compromise with Democrats has given them a vivid way to demonstrate the point they tried unsuccessfully to make during the midterms: that Republicans are motivated by ideology, not just budget balancing.

?This is one of the uglier examples of the tyranny of a temporary majority, and I think it?s going to backfire badly,? said Gov. Martin O?Malley of Maryland, the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.

?Democratic governors are facing some of the same budget challenges, and we?re asking for some of the same concessions, but we?re staying at the table and working with our work force and their union representatives,? he said. ?The Republicans are taking advantage of the economic downturn to sharpen their ideological axes and settle old scores.?

Polls and the impassioned crowds who have jeered Mr. Walker and the Republican-led Legislature outside the Capitol in Madison, Wis., offer some evidence to lift Democrats? hopes.

But for all the trumpeting of how Mr. Walker?s bill has awakened a sleeping giant of once-dispirited Democrats and union members, it will undeniably weaken labor, historically a key voting bloc for the party. And even some Democrats say that whatever the energy now, that will hurt the party long term.

Still, reactions among Republicans suggest that they, too, recognize that their party might suffer, given national polls showing that most Americans support collective bargaining rights. While fights over the cost of public workers and collective bargaining have emerged in a number of states, some Republican governors appear to be drawing careful distinctions between their own plans and Mr. Walker?s.

?This is not Wisconsin,? Rick Snyder, the newly elected Republican governor of Michigan, was quoted as telling a union group recently, even as protests were emerging in Lansing over a bill there that could allow emergency financial managers to overlook union contracts in the most financially distressed cities.

A Pew poll last week showed the number of people holding a very favorable view of unions had risen ? with a particularly sharp rise among liberal Democrats ? while the percentage of those holding negative views remained the same.

Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, said other surveys had showed a gap of about two to one favoring the Democrats. ?That was the issue with health care reform,? she said. ?It wasn?t that we were losing 52-48, it was that twice as many people strongly disapproved as approved. It?s the exact opposite now.?

Democracy for America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, two Democratic groups, said they had jointly raised $200,000 in the 12 hours after the Wisconsin Senate approved Governor Walker?s bill, and a total of $750,000 to run ads against Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature who are facing recall campaigns over the collective bargaining bill.

?On every front of the battle to take back the House ? fund-raising, volunteers, candidates ? what is happening in Madison is helping,? said Representative Steve Israel of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. ?People who we have talked about running now seem more energized by what?s happening. They understand that this is part of an ongoing Republican attack on working families, and they want to fight back.?

Republicans counter that the energy will not last.

Scott Fitzgerald, the Republican majority leader in Wisconsin?s Senate, said that by 2012, the fallout from this bill seemed more likely to him to harm Democrats? hopes for the state (which Mr. Obama easily won in 2008). ?I think once some of the union members wake up and say, ?I?ve got to wake up and write a check to the union every month?? union membership may quickly drop, and some of their power falls apart,? Mr. Fitzgerald said.