Officials said they expected to confirm the results within days.

Even before the voting was complete, however, the commissioners — a panel of judges who were appointed by Mr. Mubarak — appeared to put their finger on the scale in favor of Mr. Shafik and against Mr. Morsi of the Brotherhood. In television appearances on the final day of the voting, the commissioners floated unconfirmed allegations that could have influenced the vote against the Brotherhood, suggesting that it had infiltrated official printing facilities to produce ballots premarked for Mr. Morsi or that the group might plan violence if he lost.

Brotherhood officials called the delay of the results a power play by the governing military council. In television interviews, Mohamed Beltagy said the generals were holding back the final results to threaten the Brotherhood with the loss of the presidency if the group did not accept the dissolution of the Parliament.

“The delay is damaging, damaging, damaging,” said Morad Mohamed Ali, a spokesman for the Morsi campaign. “The country needs to settle down.”

The Brotherhood and the military council have each been flexing their muscles as the showdown escalates. On Tuesday, the Brotherhood organized a demonstration in Tahrir Square by tens of thousands of its members and others calling for an end to military rule, and by Wednesday it had become a permanent occupation. The group has said it will continue to ramp up a campaign of street protests until the generals back down.

The generals, for their part, began deploying tanks and troops on Wednesday at the entrance to Cairo in their own show of force.