No you don’t need to look at that. Your Bush/Gore document shows what the “gender gap” means. What you’re describing is an invalid comparison. Comparing where Newt’s polling with women vs. where Mitt’s polling with women isn’t the “gender gap.” The “gender gap” is the difference in how one candidate does with men vs. women. The other statistic is meaningless.
I don’t see any reference to a gender gap in the link you sent, so paste it in here if you see one.
For your information, the “gender gap” in Florida for Newt was 8 points, less than Bush in 2000. Newt won 36% of men and 28% of women. Romney’s gender gap was with men and it was 11 points, which probably shows you how little a single state election analysis is relevant to predicting the general election. Santorum had no gap, getting 13% from both genders.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2012/florida-primary-jan-31/exit-polls
Funny, they’re discussing this on FOX right now, and say Santorum has an 8% gender gap in a CNN poll.
Of course by now I’m used to the anti-Newt folks having to make stuff up in order to make him look bad, even ridiculous stuff like a “39-point gender gap,” so I’ll try to avoid making a snarky comment about it.
“Santorum has an 8% gender gap in a CNN poll.” Yes, I heard that, and CNN is referring to the ARG poll where Romney leads Santorum by 8% among women and leads Gingrich by 39%. If Santorum can narrow that gap to 3%-4%, he wins MI.