However, beyond economic grievances and emotional attachments, leadership perception plays a crucial role in shaping political trust and voter behavior.
It is important to remember that, to trust anybody else, people are looking for a leader with vision and the ability to create a competent team to manage the country. Though citizens are choosing CHP as the first party on these days, they cannot exactly say that CHP can govern the country well. Ekrem İmamoğlu’s 2019 Istanbul mayoral campaign further illustrates these general dynamics. His emotionally inclusive and hopeful message — "Everything will be fine" — was powerful, but it was his detailed, service-oriented promises that ultimately secured voter trust. Just after his initial victory, İmamoğlu maintained a calm, constructive tone, emphasizing practical improvements rather than political grievances. His message discipline, emotional resilience, and commitment to visible performance helped him achieve a historic landslide victory in the re-run election. Now he is the leader fighting for the people, standing up for their rights. We will see how his tone, performance, and overall attitude will sustain the frame well with increasing support from the voters in the ongoing process who are also looking for a vision from the leader. The way leaders and parties present options — in other words, how they design the choice architecture — directly influences voter behavior.
For a better understanding of why charisma or initial charm is not enough for continued public support, we can check a bad example of a lesson. Political figures who fail to demonstrate consistent performance and clarity — as seen with Muharrem İnce after the 2018 presidential election — lose public trust quickly, regardless of the emotional enthusiasm they initially generate.
As a conclusion, in a world where human decision-making is deeply influenced by emotional perceptions — where framing can shape political realities more than facts — a leader’s consistent attitude and principled tone are indispensable for building trust. However, as the Turkish case demonstrates, in some political cultures, performance — the visible ability to deliver — forms the essential foundation upon which emotional resonance and consistency must rest. From Obama’s emotional storytelling to Corbyn’s principled simplicity, to Erdoğan’s early service-driven success and subsequent challenges, to İmamoğlu’s performance-backed hope narrative, and to the collapse of Liz Truss’s credibility, the lesson is clear: Attitude, consistency, and demonstrable capability are the three pillars of lasting political trust and success.
