MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin, who turned 60 over the weekend, had his rule rated “more good than bad” by the majority of Russians more than 12 years after he first became the country’s leader, an opinion poll showed.

Sixty-four percent of Russians are positive about the Putin era, the state-run All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion, or VtsIOM, said in an emailed statement. Fourteen percent said Putin’s regime is bad for Russia.

Putin in May reclaimed the presidency for a six-year term after a constitutional rule forced him into a stint as prime minister from 2008. He faced the biggest protests against his rule when tens of thousands of Russians demonstrated against alleged fraud in parliamentary elections in December and the presidential balloting in March.

“I’m sure he would have had more than 80 percent of Russians supporting his era in 2008,” Valery Fedorov, VtsIOM’s head, said by phone from Moscow. “But that was another era. The new one is just starting. And it’s about people being massively unhappy with the state.”

Fifty-two percent of respondents said “people started living better” since Putin came to power in 2000, while 14 percent said life hasn’t improved in Russia since then. The poll of 1,600 Russians was conducted Sept. 29-30. It has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.

A VtsIOM poll conducted in 2007 showed 25 percent of Russians were positive about President Boris Yeltsin rule in 1991-1999, while 49 percent were negative about it.