It was pretty hostile but there was a lot of democratic process and the key thing was the ratcheting up over a good 10 years before they really went for power. They would take small pieces of power and grow their control incrementally until they had too much momentum for any other group to deal with them. Also some groups thought they could use them to their advantage and reign them in when things were sorted. They were getting the highest votes but it was a mixture of a lot of things and they pretty quickly stopped being democratic votes after the first few elections. Lots of propaganda, a large amount of coercion at least initially, some blindness and unforeseen consequences but a decent portion of the population supported the whole thing. At least that’s my understanding.