“The election results should be compared not with democracies, but with the Soviet Union,” wrote Ivan Kurilla, a historian, on Facebook. “Back then it was 99.9%, and now it’s 75%. It’s precisely by that 24% that today’s elections are freer than Soviet ones.”

Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also found the entire process wanting, if well organized. “Overall, the campaign was marked by a lack of genuine competition among contestants,” the group’s election observation mission concluded in a statement.

There were also some complaints about irregularities. A few videos of ballot stuffing appeared, although the results from a couple such polling stations were quickly nullified. But critics worried about more sophisticated techniques.

One of those was the new “absentee voting” system that allowed people to vote where they were physically rather than where they were registered. One opposition organizer who said he managed to vote twice using the system was immediately charged with a misdemeanor. But that left open the question of how many people might have been able to abuse the system.

The “electoral sultanates” that previously produced whopping numbers for Mr. Putin also seemed to have curbed their enthusiasm. In previous years the Republic of Chechnya, for example, habitually awarded Mr. Putin more than 99 percent of the vote with more than 99 percent turnout. This year it was a slightly more temperate 91.5 percent on both scales.

Over all, Mr. Putin received some 56.4 million votes out of more than 110 million eligible voters, the most ever cast for a Russian president. Turnout was 67.5 percent. The closest candidate to him was Pavel N. Grudinin from the Communist Party with 11.78 percent, followed by Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, a right-wing nationalist, with 5.65 percent. Ksenia A. Sobchak, the only woman, attracted just 1.68 percent.