How does a DAO really work when it comes to decision making? Do we will still eventually have to trust the project owners to honour the vote results?

From my understanding, a DAO allows a group of people to make decisions for a project. Often, holders of a certain token can vote on a decision and the decision will be made based on which one the majority voted for.

As i try to understand further, does that mean a DAO smart contract is pretty much just a voting logic where you can create a new poll topic and people holding the tokens issued by the contract can place their votes? After a certain period, the poll expires and the result is final.

Assuming if that's how a DAO works, how can we trust that the project owners will honour the poll result? They could still go with their way. Or they could pretend like they are honouring the poll when they are doing something else (like our politicians). Does this mean we would still have to trust the project owners to honour the voted decision?