Thus my use of it in quotations (it was brought up in the thread before).
You're quite right, except that I should note that Russians are quite used to having one choice of leader so I wouldn't say his popularity is massively out of proportion (paradoxical though it may be, many Soviet-era leaders were relatively popular; Yeltsin, perhaps Russia's worst leader ever, even had overwhelming popularity for the early part of his career).
But that does bring me back to the question of elections. Putin has stated that he will not be running in 2008, but then he made some rather ominous remarks that he is not planning to step away from public/political life afterwards.
My personal prediction is
Ivanov, in which case I think we can safely expect him to continue along Putin's lines, and even perhaps more forcefully.