Politicians – and in particular career politicians - have a reputation for being distant from voters and not acting in their interests, meaning that voters mistrust them. Mistrust in politicians is problematic since politicians, and in particular parliamentarians, play a crucial role in legitimising representative democracy. However, we do not know whether rather unchangeable traits of politicians (such as age, career path, gender, and profession) or changeable factors such as the behavior of politicians (such as legislative effectiveness, voter orientation, their communication behaviour) impact their evaluations. Moreover, we are interested whether parliamentarians can compensate for unfavorable unchangeable characteristics such as being a career politician with their behavior e.g. by being very effective in parliament or very voter-oriented. Based on survey experiments conducted in Switzerland, Germany, the UK, Poland, the Netherlands, France and Belgium, we show that voters indeed appreciate younger, female politicians who are not the typical career politicians. Yet, older, male career politicians can indeed compensate these shortcomings by realizing their legislative goals in parliament, spending time in the constituency, knowing voter preferences well or communicating on social media.