Besides giving Mr. Xi more confidence in taking the crown, the scandal over Mr. Bo could affect the succession process in another way — it might push the party to carry out more consultative procedures as it selects new members for the 25-member Politburo and its Standing Committee.

“Particularly in the wake of the Bo Xilai case, there is more pressure on them to make it more transparent, to give it more legitimacy,” said Cheng Li, a scholar of Chinese politics at the Brookings Institution. “The leaders are quite weak. They need to find some sources to make them look strong.”

Chinese officials might bolster a system of conducting straw polls among party elites that they began years ago. In 2007, at a meeting of the Central Committee and other senior party members, attendees were asked to name the people they thought should be promoted to the Politburo. Mr. Xi got the most votes, followed by Mr. Li, and that helped build the rationale for giving them their current status. Some say Zeng Qinghong, a powerful ally of Mr. Jiang, phrased the poll question in a way that would help ensure that Mr. Xi came out on top.

Party leaders are likely to hold the same kind of poll at the large session in June, to lend legitimacy to the front-runners for Politburo and Standing Committee seats, according to experts on the ins and outs of elite Communist Party politics.

If the scandal had not erupted, it is unclear how hard Mr. Jiang, 85, would have tried to push Mr. Bo for a Standing Committee post, particularly after top leaders learned that Mr. Bo had been engaged in a wiretapping campaign of officials visiting Chongqing.

Mr. Jiang has several strong candidates to fill the seats that will be allotted to his faction. Among that camp’s favorites for promotion are Yu Zhengsheng, party secretary of Shanghai; Zhang Gaoli, party secretary of Tianjin; and Zhang Dejiang, a vice prime minister who was sent to Chongqing in March to fill Mr. Bo’s position as party chief. Each of their chances to make the Standing Committee has improved now that Mr. Bo has been eliminated as a rival for one of the seats allotted to Mr. Jiang’s faction, which Mr. Li, the analyst, asserts has become one of princelings.

Mr. Jiang’s meeting in Beijing last week with Howard Schultz, chief executive of Starbucks, has been widely interpreted as a way for him to broadcast, just through word of his appearance, that he is healthy and deeply involved in decisions over Mr. Bo and the leadership transition.