Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is likely to resist pressure to make a graceful exit and go down fighting in an election runoff with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
"Mr Mugabe is a high stakes political gambler, and I think he is going to go for it with everything he can marshall.
But I don't think he can reverse his fortunes," said Brian Kagoro, a lawyer and political commentator.
A senior Western diplomat, who asked not to be named, said: "He is not the type that quietly walks away into the sunset. I don't think he will take up any of these offers of an exit deal."
The signs are clear that Mugabe's iron grip on the country is slipping after 28 years in power and even his control of powerful security forces and militias will not save him.
Cracks have appeared in the previously monolithic ZANU-PF even if fear has stopped many powerful figures openly backing former finance minister Simba Makoni, the third candidate in the election.
Mr Makoni and a breakaway faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are likely to unite behind veteran Mugabe rival Tsvangirai in a runoff.
"Mr Mugabe will go into any re-run a very desperate man, and I see him being beaten very badly, getting humiliated," said Eldred Masunungure, a political science professor at the University of Zimbabwe.
Mr Kagoro agreed: "He cannot win this election because he is fighting the economy, and the economy is in such bad shape you cannot gloss over it without looking ridiculous."
Mr Mugabe's hardline politics have pushed the former British colony's economy into freefall, with the world's highest inflation at more than 100,000 pe rcent, a virtually worthless currency, shortages of food and fuel and an HIV/AIDS epidemic.
MDC Secretary-General Tendai Biti said they would accept a runoff even though they had won an absolute majority of the presidential vote. They said Mr Mugabe would be embarrassed by any runoff.
Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga, however, said "President Mugabe is going nowhere" and emphasised the support he has from his security forces.
Asked if Mr Mugabe would accept defeat in a runoff, he told Sky television: "He is a gentleman. He is professional and he understands these things." Even the state-run Herald newspaper - normally a loyal mouthpiece for Mr Mugabe - conceded on Wednesday that he had failed to win a majority for the first time and would be forced into a runoff.
With the countryside now suffering as much as the urban opposition strongholds, the MDC has made major inroads into Mr Mugabe's traditional rural base.
"I just don't see how he is going to recover from this now because pyschologically there is a momentum building up for the final blow," Mr Masunungure said.
The veteran Zimbabwean leader has survived through a political patronage system rewarding loyalists, including rural chiefs, and an iron fist that punishes dissenters. But his ranks have suffered divisions and desertions over his refusal to hand over power to a younger leadership.
Mr Makoni abandoned ZANU-PF to enter the presidential race as an independent, accusing Mr Mugabe of stifling political reforms and wrecking one of Africa's most promising economies. Zimbabweans, who once had one of the region's highest standards of living now scrounge to survive in what many call a "destitute economy."
The cost of living is way above average salaries, and people carry bags of money for simple shopping.
Mr Mugabe's seizure and redistribution of white-owned farms to unqualified farmers, many of them his cronies, have left a country which used to export food surviving on aid supplies. His latest plan to nationalise foreign companies, including mines and banks, merely accelerated the economy's death spiral.
A quarter of Zimbabwe's 13 million population has already fled abroad to find jobs and decent lives.
Some critics say Mr Mugabe is probably hanging onto power as long as possible because of fears he could be dragged before an international court for rights abuse charges if he left office.
But his hardline entourage, including security chiefs, may now be thinking about their own survival and considering whether the time has come to finally abandon the 84-year-old leader.