Personal appeal is treated as central by campaigns but as noise by voting scholars

Evidence

What is a great leader? What is a popular leader? Are they the same? Are they the result of the same or different factors? Our naive belief in the “great person” theory of leadership, that the person shapes events and the leader creates his or her own greatness, has long been challenged by scholars from diverse disciplines who analyze leadership appeal and performance into broad impersonal forces and social-structural factors. Yet in the real world of politics, the factor of personal appeal or having (in the language of the Harris poll) “an attractive, forceful personality” is of enormous concern to campaign strategists and journalists (even if it is largely treated as error variance by voting analysts; see Nie, Verba, & Petrocik, 1979; Sears, 1969). — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1279