If you live in a Western democracy your politicians are very accountable to media owners and corporate donors. Voters are a very long way down the influence list, because media owners and corporate donors have sophisticated and very expensive - but high ROI - ways to shape voter opinion.

Some are simple censorship - like X and FB throttling the reach of unwanted content and promoting the reach of the opposite.

Others appear believably organic.

The obvious ones are crude, but they still work on huge swathes of the population.

The first step to recovery is to accept that this is how the system really works, and the idea that voters pick leaders based on a rational consideration of their record and potential benefits is absolute fantasy.

That's mostly a feature of elections with single-member districts or other winner-take-all mechanisms. Every successful politician must have a wide coalition behind them, and marginal groups that could back either major candidate determine the winner.

Proportional elections have different dynamics, especially if elected candidates are determined by personal votes (and not by predetermined ranks on the party list). A successful politician mostly needs to find a niche and maintain their visibility and support within that niche.