Do political preferences translate into behavior? I argue that when individuals support a stigmatized party, they have an incentive to conceal that support to avoid social sanctions. I provide real-world, causal evidence of this falsification of political preferences by leveraging a unique decision by the Electoral Commission in one region of Spain that made voting not private in one of four elections in the same day. Qualitative evidence shows that this decision made voters feel that their vote choice could be observed.

Research suggests that when women stand as candidates for elected office, they do not face an electoral penalty. However, this ignores potential heterogeneity in voters’ willingness to support female candidates. We explore how sexism – specifically ambivalent sexism – affects voters’ decisions to vote for male and female candidates in three Anglo-Saxon majoritarian countries: Britain, the United States, and Canada.