In French parliamentary and local elections, candidates ranked first and second in the first round automatically qualify for the second round, while a third candidate qualifies only when selected by more than 12.5 percent of registered citizens. Using a fuzzy RDD around this threshold, we find that the third candidate's presence substantially increases the share of registered citizens who vote for any candidate and reduces the vote share of the top two candidates. It disproportionately harms the candidate ideologically closest to the third and causes her defeat in one fifth of the races. Additional evidence suggests that these results are driven by voters who value voting expressively over voting strategically for the top‐two candidate they dislike the least to ensure her victory; and by third candidates who, absent party‐level agreements leading to their dropping out, value the benefits associated with competing in the second round more than influencing its outcome.

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While there is evidence of gender differences in policy preferences and electoral strategic behaviors, less is known about how these differences play out during crises. We use a close election RD design to compare the performance of female- and male-led Brazilian municipalities during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that having a female mayor led to more deaths per capita early in the first wave of the pandemic -a period characterized by great uncertainty about the severity of the disease and the effectiveness of containment policies. In contrast, having a female mayor led to fewer deaths per capita early in the second wave -a period where this uncertainty was reduced, and when the 2020 mayoral election took place. Consistent with the evolution of deaths, we find that female mayors were less likely to implement commerce restrictions at the beginning of the period, while they became more likely to do so at the end. We also show that the second-wave effect coincides with a lower tendency of the population in maleled municipalities to stay at home around election day. Both the first and second wave effects are driven by municipalities whose mayors were not term limited, and thus allowed to run for re-election. These findings suggest that the gender differences we observe stem from female and male mayors reacting differently to electoral incentives. While electorally motivated female mayors were more likely to delay restrictive policies at the beginning, electorally motivated male mayors were more likely to open-up the municipality closer to the election.

Adrien Hyppolite for the excellent research assistance he provided at the onset of the project; and Eric Dubois for his outstanding work of data entry and cleaning. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.