Recently, various incidents have heightened voter anxiety in areas traditionally associated with male leadership. If these anxieties activate voters' gender stereotypes, they may negatively affect female candidates. In this paper, we examine the impact of information that incites anxiety, especially that which activates masculine stereotypes, on voters' evaluations of female candidates. In our conjoint experiment, we found that voters who received information that incited anxiety about missile launches were less likely to support female candidates than those who did not. This effect is particularly pronounced among male voters, who are significantly less willing to vote for female candidates after receiving such information. Conversely, female voters' support for female candidates remained unchanged under similar conditions. These results suggest that exposure to information that activates gender stereotypes, even if unrelated to the candidate, influences voter behavior.

　This paper presents an empirical analysis of the effect of the time cost of voting on voter turnout. The analysis covered the 48th General Election for the House of Representatives in Japan held on 22 October 2017 and used individual data from a survey of the electorate to estimate the effect of time distance to the polling station on voter turnout. The empirical results showed that political attitudes variables had a significant effect on voter turnout, but even after controlling for these factors, the effect of time to polling station on voter turnout was still statistically significant. Furthermore, the effect was exactly opposite for election day voting and early voting, with time distance to the polling station having a negative effect on election day voting but a positive effect on early voting. Moreover, there was a non-linearity in the effect of time distance to the polling station, with the size of the marginal effect diminishing with distance.