Furthermore, we see that positivity just exceeds four when a politician is very well-known, but starts negatively. The fate of a politician therefore seems to be that he or she starts as a category problem (negative but non-unique associations). Furthermore, it is striking that even when we are not familiar with a politician, we still have almost three associations on average. In the further analysis of how the Dutch view politicians, we will see that every politician struggles with an image problem.
The relationship between awareness on the one hand and the number of associations, attitude and resonance on the other can be seen below.
We see that the pattern for the higher layers in the brand pyramid is similar for both politicians and brands. As awareness increases, the number of associations increases, attitudes become higher and resonance increases, but much less strongly. What is also striking is the dip in attitude and resonance as the hotel contact database awareness score increases from 1 to 2. It seems that attitudes decrease as soon as people realize that it is a politician. The particularly low scores in absolute terms are also striking: we apparently do not like politicians at all. Resonance with a politician is an idée fixe!
Politicians: what do they evoke in us, what do they trigger in us?
Time to see what politicians evoke when we think of them. We presented the ten politicians in free association to our respondents and asked them what associations came to mind. We presented both a photo of the politician and his or her name. The two most famous politicians, Rutte and Wilders, appear to be negatively charged, runner up Klaver is not half as well-known, but is positively charged. The word clouds of Rutte and Klaver are the most interesting .
What comes to mind when you think of Mark Rutte?
It was to be expected that Rutte was damaged by the accumulation of scandals of himself or his party members. Think of the receipt affair or unfulfilled promises (such as the one about the 1000 euros). But that the associations 'unreliable' and 'liar' are by far the strongest associations, is still shocking. The fact that people also like him, that he is a man of the people and you can laugh with him, does not detract from the fact that this is still a disconcerting associative network for a prime minister.