WASHINGTON – A small contingent of partisan Democrats is committed to delaying a vote on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, but a growing sense of inevitability about the nomination among others in the party is making the stalling strategy a tough sell.

Judge Alito, President Bush’s choice to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, survived three days of questioning last week without suffering a single serious blow. Frustrated Democrats, reluctant to cede Justice O’Connor’s seat without a fight, indicated Friday they will look to delay a committee vote on the nominee that was scheduled for tomorrow.

Since then, however, several prominent Democrats have downplayed talk of a filibuster. Senator Feinstein, a Democrat of California who sits on the Judiciary Committee that reviews nominations, said yesterday on “Face the Nation” that Judge Alito said nothing at the hearing to justify stalling a vote in the Senate. With top Democrats such as Ms. Feinstein ruling out a filibuster, the reasons for delaying a vote in committee are increasingly unclear.

“It’s looking more and more pointless every day,” a spokesman for Senator Cornyn, a Republican from Texas who sits on the Judiciary Committee, Donald Stewart, said. “They’ve got a senior member of their own party saying they shouldn’t have a filibuster and that they should have a vote. It’s kind of hard to overcome that.”

But other Democrats, including Senator Schumer, of New York, said yesterday that they are not yet ready to consent to a committee vote tomorrow or to ruling out a filibuster. In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. Schumer said he does not yet have all the answers he needs from the nominee and that an indefinite delay by way of a filibuster is still on the table.

“The bottom line is we’re still finishing the process,” Mr. Schumer said. “Written questions have to be answered. I submitted a whole bunch. So it’s premature to say anything until we fully assess the record.”

Republicans said yesterday that some Democrats, led by Senator Kennedy, a Democrat of Massachusetts, are privately confident that they can still build opposition to Judge Alito. They said that a veteran judicial aide to Mr. Kennedy, James Flug, boasted to a group of younger aides late last week that he has torpedoed previous nominees under even tighter time constraints.

“Flug is convinced he is going to block this nomination,” a top Republican aide told The New York Sun yesterday. “He was telling people he has been through nine of these confirmation fights and defeated two, and both of them the momentum didn’t start until after the hearing.”

Mr. Flug helped orchestrate the defeat of two Supreme Court nominees of President Nixon, G. Harrold Carswell and Clement Haynsworth, and he helped block a Supreme Court nominee of President Reagan, Robert Bork, in 1987. Mr. Flug also nearly blocked the confirmation of another Republican nominee, Clarence Thomas, in 1991.

By requesting that a committee vote be held over for a week, Democrats hope to delay a vote in the full Senate until after President Bush delivers his State of the Union speech at the end of the month. Republicans are not scheduled to be in session next week and are scheduled to have a policy retreat beginning Thursday, January 26. The majority leader of the Senate, Senator Frist, of Tennessee, suggested he would cancel the retreat in order to have a vote on the confirmation late next week.

With Republicans saying they are committed to conducting a vote before the end of the month, some Democrats have lost the stomach for further delays. Several Democratic members of the so-called “Gang of 14,” a group of senators who worked out a compromise on judicial nominees last spring, have come out against a filibuster of Judge Alito. With Republicans holding a solid 55 to 45 majority in the Senate, a filibuster is seen as the only possible obstacle to confirmation.

Another possible reason for delay at this point, Republicans said, is an effort to convince Democrats to vote against the nominee. If Judge Alito earns 60 or more votes in the Senate, some have argued that Mr. Bush will be in a position to nominate another conservative in the event of another opening on the Supreme Court. Said another top Republican strategist:

“A holdover in Committee by Senator Kennedy and other extreme liberal Democrats is unreasonable and unnecessary. Judge Alito answered hundreds of questions and has thousands of pages of published opinions. The only reason to delay is to throw the desperate liberal special interests a bone and give them time to trump up more attempts at character assassination.”