ABSTRACT The Danish general election in 2022 appeared to foster a paradox: the campaign was remarkably personalized, while voters were less likely to vote for an individual candidate compared to the last five elections. Personalization in the campaign did not seem to spill over to voting behaviour. The study argues and shows using register and survey data that institutional barriers limited the direct expression of personalized electoral behaviour, but voters strongly motivated by political leaders compensated by casting party list votes. The true paradox of the Danish election was that decreasing preferential votes actually reflected increasing personalization, concentrating personal votes in the hands of party leaders. This finding speaks to a general concern about how different arenas of political personalization interact. It suggests that political institutions can only partly contain the personalization of politics because political actors – elites as well as ordinary voters – navigate within the given institutions to maximize their personalized political preferences, finding opportunities to compensate for the institutional barriers. Democracies must, therefore, consider institutional designs as well as political cultures when meeting the possible challenges posed by increased personalization of politics.