Tuump clearly wasn't very successful at it because he lost and, as far as I know, Putin has an 80% popularity rating in Russia when Russians are asked - just as Xi has 90% when Chinese people are asked - he wouldn't need to change any instruments to retain power, he and Xi are popular enough to do so without "stealing" votes.

Those 80 and 90% ratings come from the Edelman Trust Barometer, not internal surveys, so I think they can be assumed to be fairly accurate and, even if they were 20-30% off, they would still mean both leaders retaining their positions. Something more Western leaders in so-called democratic countries would love to have