Media coverage often features some confusing mislabeling of the gender gap and women’s voting patterns. To clarify:

The Gender Gap in voting is the difference between the proportions of women and men who support a given candidate, generally the leading or winning candidate. It is the gap between the genders, not within a gender.

[% Women for Leading or Winning Candidate] – [% Men for Leading or Winning Candidate] = Gender Gap

The Women’s Vote describes the division in women’s support for major party candidates in any given race. It is the percentage-point advantage that one candidate has over the other among women voters – that is, the difference in women’s support for the Democratic and Republican candidates.

[% Women for Leading Party’s Candidate] – [% Women for Trailing Party’s Candidate] = Women’s Vote

This distinction is important because even when women and men favor the same candidate, they usually do so by different margins, resulting in a gender gap. For example, we frequently see gender gaps even in races where the women’s vote breaks for the Republican – i.e., where more women voters prefer the Republican candidate than the Democratic candidate.