From the moment the preliminary results first flashed across state television late Sunday, the authorities left no room for misinterpretation. Mr. Putin, they said, won more than 87 percent of the vote, his closest competitor just 4 percent. It had all the hallmarks of an authoritarian Potemkin plebiscite.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin may have felt more comfortable orchestrating such a large margin of victory because Mr. Putin\u2019s approval rating has climbed during the war in independent polls, owing to a rally-around-the flag effect and optimism about the Russian economy. The Levada Center, an independent pollster, reported last month that 86 percent of Russians approved of Mr. Putin, his highest rating in more than seven years.<\/p>\n

But while the figures may suggest unabiding support for Mr. Putin and his agenda across Russia, the situation is more complex than the numbers convey. The leader of one opposition research group in Moscow has argued that backing for Mr. Putin is actually far more brittle than simple approval numbers suggest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

\u201cThe numbers we get on polls from Russia don\u2019t mean what people think they mean,\u201d said Aleksei Minyailo, a Moscow-based opposition activist and co-founder of a research project called Chronicles, which has been polling Russians in recent months. \u201cBecause Russia is not an electoral democracy but a wartime dictatorship.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

In a late January survey, Chronicles asked one group of Russian respondents what they wanted in key policy areas and a different group what they expected to see from Mr. Putin \u2014 and documented a substantive difference between desires and expectations.<\/p>\n

More than half of respondents, for example, said they supported restoring relations with Western countries, but only 28 percent expected Mr. Putin to restore them. Some 58 percent expressed support for a truce with Ukraine, but only 29 percent expected Mr. Putin to agree to one.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see that Russians want different things from what they expect from Putin,\u201d Mr. Minyailo said. \u201cProbably if they did have any kind of alternative, they might make a different choice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

Compelling alternative choices, however, have been systematically eliminated over the near quarter century that Mr. Putin has been in power in Russia.<\/p>\n

Opposition figures have been exiled, jailed or killed. Independent news outlets have been driven out of the country. And a wave of repression unseen since the Soviet era has led to lengthy prison sentences for simple acts of dissent, such as critical social media posts.<\/p>\n

Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition figure who carried the hopes of many Russians for an alternative to Mr. Putin, died under mysterious circumstances in an Arctic prison last month. After declaring victory late Sunday, Mr. Putin called Mr. Navalny\u2019s death an \u201cunfortunate incident.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

The war has only further closed what little space used to exist for alternatives to Mr. Putin\u2019s agenda to gain traction in public.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

\u201cThere is a sophisticated case to be made about why this war is so much against Russia\u2019s interest, and that part of the spectrum is missing,\u201d said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. \u201cIt is now happening in exile, and the government is erecting a lot of barriers to people tapping into this content.\u201d<\/p>\n

By casting those against the war as saboteurs, he said, Mr. Putin\u2019s regime has succeeded in making \u201cthe opposition something that is really unattractive \u2014 more for outsiders, not for mainstream people.\u201d<\/p>\n

In years past, Russia\u2019s so-called \u201cpolitical technologists\u201d allowed a semblance of competition and open debate in presidential elections to drive turnout and give the race a patina of authenticity. But this year they took no chances.<\/p>\n

Yekaterina S. Duntsova, a relatively unknown TV journalist and former municipal deputy from a city 140 miles west of Moscow, tried to run for president on an antiwar platform but was swiftly disqualified. So was Boris B. Nadezhdin, another under-the-radar politician who collected more than 100,000 signatures required to enter the race but could not get on the ballot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

\u201cThey deemed both of them dangerous enough not to let them on the ballot,\u201d Mr. Minyailo said. \u201cThat tells a lot, to my mind, about the nature of the regime and about how stalwart Putin\u2019s position is. If his regime thinks there is a danger to letting a provincial journalist collect signatures, that tells a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

Russian opinion polling regularly shows that a relatively small segment of the Russian population are die-hard supporters of Mr. Putin and a similarly sized group are aggressive opponents, many of them now abroad.<\/p>\n

The majority, pollsters have found, are relatively apathetic, supporting Mr. Putin passively, with no other alternative coming onto their radar. They are particularly influenced by the narrative on television, which is controlled by the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeep wells of social inertia, apathy and atomization are the real source of Putin\u2019s power,\u201d Mr. Gabuev said. Many Russians, he said, don\u2019t have a sophisticated framework for thinking about certain issues, because there is no public discussion taking place.<\/p>\n

And those Russians who do articulate desires that differ from Mr. Putin\u2019s actions are not necessarily willing to fight for what they want, Mr. Minyailo noted. Many Russians believe they have no influence on the country\u2019s course of events.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

Still, the increase in support for Mr. Putin among Russians in the two years since he ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine is unmistakable across multiple polls.<\/p>\n

Denis Volkov, director of the Levada Center, said that a number of metrics showed consolidation around Mr. Putin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe monitor many indicators, not only approval rating,\u201d Mr. Volkov said. \u201cWe ask open-ended questions. We ask about the economic situation. We ask about the mood of people. All these indicators are pointing in one direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Armed with a vast propaganda apparatus, Mr. Putin has convinced millions of Russians that he is valiantly defending them against an antagonistic <\/span>Western world bent on using Ukraine as a cudgel to destroy their nation and their way of life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

\u201cThe state narrative has generated this idea that it\u2019s Russia versus everybody else,\u201d said Katerina Tertytchnaya, a comparative politics professor at the University of Oxford. \u201c It\u2019s very important, this narrative of being under siege. The lack of an alternative is also cited as one of the reasons that people support Putin. People cannot conceive of an alternative.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

It is not only that Mr. Putin seems superior to the alternative candidates that the Kremlin allows to appear on state television. He also comes across as a better choice compared to nearly all his historical predecessors.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutin\u2019s first two terms and Putin overall \u2014 that\u2019s the paradox, they really are the happiest life in the country\u2019s history,\u201d Mr. Gabuev said. \u201cBecause the combination of wealth and material prosperity and freedoms being present at the same time was never higher.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Kremlin stage-managed Russia\u2019s presidential vote over the weekend to send a singular message at home and abroad: that President Vladimir V. Putin\u2019s support is overwhelming and unshakable, despite or even because of his war against Ukraine. From the moment the preliminary results first flashed across state television late Sunday, the authorities left no room<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46581"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}