This study investigates how content on politicians’ Instagram profiles influences perceptions of their ideological alignment and populist traits. Using an innovative visual conjoint experiment, we manipulate politicians’ sociodemographic traits (e.g., gender, age, ethnicity, occupation), lifestyle choices (e.g., food, pets), issue-based statements, and imagery reflecting dichotomies such as elite-vs-people and nostalgia-for-the-past vs. hope-for-the-future. We test hypotheses concerning how these visual and textual cues shape users’ perceptions of politicians’ ideology and populist traits, both individually and in interaction with one another. Furthermore, we examine whether apolitical cues remain significant when explicit political information is present (e.g., politicians' stances on taxation and healthcare), and how respondents’ sociopolitical attributes interact with politicians’ profiles characteristics to shape their inferences. Data are collected from almost 6,000 respondents in Italy, France, Sweden, and the Czech Republic. This research provides new insights into the interplay of visual and textual signals in ideological inference and proposes methodological innovations for future studies.