How to Measure Power in a Democracy?

How does a dictator measure relative distributions of power within the system? How do i know that i'm firmly enough in control or in power from a would be usurper to be in a sufficiently advanced lead? Yes, ogan, it's very tricky. In democracies, you can do opinion pullsd an, stuff like that out to measure power in authorityr and dictatorships. But we have seen a lot of cases where these really weak figures take over these big baracacies, and they actually don't get to exercise a lot of power through these formal institutions.