I'm Russian, so I'm speaking from personal experience here. The media did some work back in the day to get him elected in the fir place, but they made him into a "strong hand" because that's what the electorate demanded. The people weren't duped into voting for an autocrat; they were openly told that this is exactly why they should vote for him - and most did.

From there elections kept getting less and less free, but it was a gradual affair - strangle the opposition TV first, then newspapers, then finally start playing directly with electoral fraud; fake counting etc. The purpose, though, wasn't to ensure a win - his popularity was always sufficient for that. No, it was to make it a win so resounding that agitprop could refer to it as a definitive popular mandate. And for parliamentary elections, to get the supermajority they needed for constitutional amendments. But that is how authoritarian democracy works - the majority votes in the government that cracks down on political dissent because the majority wants that. No amount of free press or free and fair elections would change that.