5 Traits That Make a Politician Good at Their Job (According to Science)

By Alex Buscemi, Editorial Manager at Builders 

As we approach the midterm elections on November 3, it’s worth taking a closer look at the traits that make politicians effective.

What do we mean by effective? Not the ability to get elected (that’s often driven by a different set of traits entirely—but more on that later). We mean how well a politician governs once in office.

Historians, political scientists, and psychologists measure a politician’s performance in many ways. Did they get things done, turning their proposals into laws and policies? Did they handle crises well? Were the people they served better off? And did they do the job honestly? Of course, the relative importance researchers give to each of these factors is a matter of opinion. 

And the context of the times in which a politician took office matters, too (one study we looked at, C-SPAN’s Presidential Historians Survey, gave Abraham Lincoln the highest score while acknowledging that his defining crisis ultimately ended in the Civil War). 

But as subjective as the final rankings may be, certain traits kept emerging among the highest-rated leaders. Here are five of the biggest ones. 

1. A curious, wide-ranging mind

UC Davis psychologist Dean Keith Simonton has spent decades modeling why historians rank some presidents above others. Much of it comes down to circumstance: years in office, years as a wartime leader, scandal, assassination, and arriving as a war hero. But one personal trait consistently adds to that list: what he calls intellectual brilliance, a mix of curiosity, original ideas, and depth of understanding. Top scorers included John Quincy Adams, John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton. 

In his work, intellectual brilliance predicts expert ratings better than raw IQ. The catch: the same research found that intellectual brilliance tends to go hand in hand with a smaller margin of victory. Voters don't reliably reward the trait that historians later prize.

2. Seeing more than one side

Psychologists Peter Suedfeld and Philip Tetlock developed a way to score how leaders think from what they say and write. They call it integrative complexity: the ability to recognize several perspectives on an issue and then work out how they fit together. 

It turns out to matter in the highest-stakes moments. In a 1977 study of diplomatic messages, leaders' complexity was significantly lower in crises that ended in war (1914 and 1950) than in ones settled peacefully, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, where complexity actually rose as the standoff peaked. A companion study of UN speeches on the Middle East found complexity dropped in the months before each of four wars. 

Stress pushes everyone toward black-and-white thinking. Leaders who can hold on to nuance under pressure seem better at finding a way out.

3. Working across the aisle

For legislators, the best evidence comes from political scientists Craig Volden and Alan Wiseman. Their Legislative Effectiveness Scores rate every member of Congress on how many bills they sponsor, how far those bills advance, and how significant they are.

Their headline finding: bipartisan lawmakers get more done than partisan ones. The most effective members focus on their district's needs, build a broad set of allies in both parties, and stay open to compromise. In the most recent full Congress (2023–24), top scorers in both parties ranged from House Republicans Sam Graves and Don Bacon to Senate Democrats Gary Peters and Amy Klobuchar. 

4. Learning the machinery

Good intentions can only get a politician so far. They must also know how the institution works—and that largely comes with experience. The Legislative Effectiveness research also finds that seniority boosts a lawmaker's results. 

When a member of Congress is on their seventh term, they are much more likely to hold a position of power, such as the chair of a committee or subcommittee. They can push their own bills and stop other members’ proposals early on.

Seniority also gives a politician time to build the know-how, relationships, and momentum required to get bills passed. 

5. A clean record

Scandal reliably drags down a politician’s place in history. It costs them votes, to be sure. But it also gets in the way of the job itself. 

A 2020 study published in Political Research Quarterly tracked 253 cases of professional or personal scandal among House members from 1989 to 2012. Normally, members grow more effective from one term to the next. Scandal stalled that climb: implicated members lost ground on legislative effectiveness scores, became less central in the networks of colleagues who cosponsor bills, and were less likely to gain top committee seats or leadership posts. 

The authors suggest two reasons: colleagues keep their distance from a tainted member, and the member has to divert time and resources away from legislating.

Remember these traits at the ballot box 

Ask voters what they want in a leader and you'll hear a familiar list. Wide majorities of Americans say it's important for elected officials to be knowledgeable, honest and willing to admit when they're wrong, and most say it's very important to compromise with the other side. In other words, much of what's in this article. That's good.

Unfortunately, we don’t always vote for what we say we want. None of these traits move many votes, because most voters stick with their party. Of Americans who voted in both the 2020 presidential race and the 2022 midterms, only 6% switched parties between the two.

Candidates get a boost from good looks and a deeper voice, especially among voters who know little about them. Meanwhile, a lawmaker’s track record barely registers at the ballot box, largely because most voters never hear about it. When people are told how effective their representative has been, they approve more of the effective ones.

That gap is one you can close. Before November 3, look past the headshot and the party label. Vote for the traits that make someone good at the job, not just good at getting it.

Need help making sense of the midterms? Click here.

Alex Buscemi can be reached at abuscemi@buildersmovement.org

Art by Matthew Lewis