Like politicians ending a bitter campaign, the activists and company officials who have bloodied each other in a proxy fight for influence over Charming Shoppes Inc. will meet tomorrow for the corporate equivalent of election night - the shareholder meeting.

Hanging in the balance as final votes are cast at the 10 a.m. meeting at the Bensalem headquarters of the company, whose operations include the Lane Bryant and Fashion Bug chains, will be the fate of chief executive officer and board chairwoman Dorrit J. Bern. She has been the target of dissidents, who blame her for a 60 percent drop in the company's share price in the last year.

To crib the slogan used by the plus-size women's apparel retailer: "It's All About Her."

Gayle Coolick, director of investor relations, predicted Bern would remain on the board.

"We have every confidence, based on what she's done for this company in the past, particularly in down environments, that she will lead us to perform well when this economy turns," Coolick said.

The New York investment firms Myca Partners and Crescendo Partners have spent months trying to convince shareholders that Bern and her board are responsible for a slide into unprofitability.

Crescendo and Myca, which have amassed about 8 percent of Charming Shoppes' stock, are pushing for their own slate of three board nominees.

Company officials have called the hedge funds "corporate raiders," and dissidents have accused the company of producing "carefully spun 'home-cooked' numbers."

Voting results should be known by day's end, said Charles M. Elson, a proxy expert from the University of Delaware's Lerner College of Business & Economics.

"They will know by the opening of that meeting, basically, who won," he said. "If it's very, very close, there'll be challenges. Did someone vote twice? Did someone do their proxy card correctly? But they should know pretty much by tomorrow where they stand. It's not like Florida, with hanging chads."

The company lost $83.4 million in its latest fiscal year. It says much of that has to do with depressed consumer spending overall.

Dissidents began agitating for changes as early as last summer.

The company has since said it would close stores, consolidate operations, and potentially sell unprofitable catalog units. It also stripped Bern of executive perks she had enjoyed for much of her 13-year tenure, including a free Rittenhouse Square apartment.

But rather than granting the dissidents board seats, the company sued in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, seeking to block the nominees from running for election on the grounds that the investor group had violated U.S. securities laws. On Friday, Judge Anita B. Brody denied the company's request for a preliminary injunction.