A simple but alarming question is dominating political discourse in Brazil with just six weeks left until the national elections: Will President Jair Bolsonaro accept the results?

For months, Bolsonaro has attacked Brazil’s electronic voting machines as rife with fraud — despite virtually no evidence — and Brazil’s election officials as aligned against him.

He has suggested that he would dispute any loss unless changes are made in election procedures. He has enlisted Brazil’s military in his battle. And he has told his tens of millions of supporters to prepare for a fight.

“If need be,” he said in a recent speech, “we will go to war.” With its vote on October 2, Brazil is now at the forefront of the growing global threats to democracy, fuelled by populist leaders, extremism, highly polarised electorates and Internet disinformation.

Yet, according to interviews with more than 35 Bolsonaro administration officials, military generals, federal judges, election authorities, members of Congress and foreign diplomats, the people in power in Brazil feel confident that while Bolsonaro could dispute the election’s results, he lacks the institutional support to stage a successful coup.

Brazil’s last coup, in 1964, led to a brutal 21-year military dictatorship. “The middle class supported it. Business people supported it.

The press supported it. And the US supported it,” said Luís Robert Barroso, a Supreme Court justice and Brazil’s former elections chief.

“Well, none of these players support a coup now.”

Instead, the officials worry about lasting damage to Brazil’s democratic institutions and about violence in the streets.

Bolsonaro’s claims of fraud and potential refusal to accept a loss echo those of his ally Donald J. Trump, and Brazilian officials repeatedly cited January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol as an example of what could happen.

“How do we have any control over this?” Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator and Bolsonaro’s son, said in an interview with the Brazilian newspaper Estadão in reference to potential violence.

In the US, he said, “people followed the problems in the electoral system, were outraged and did what they did. There was no command from President Trump, and there will be no command from President Bolsonaro.”

New York Times News Service