The column doesn't call the 33 point figure a "gender gap" ─ it says "gender chasm" ─ so the term "gender gap" is not misused. It's also not exactly a mistake to use a different metric to the one that academics might usually use, any more than it's a mistake to report the diameter of something that people would normally care about the radius of. It's worth noting that the number they report is larger than numbers which might normally be reported due to being a different metric, but it's not a "mistake" to use a different metric if the metric used is described correctly.

Also, to be clear, the linked Guardian piece is an opinion column, not an article (explanation of these terms), and the author is a columnist, not a reporter.

@Kevin If you're taking the vernacular meaning of "chasm" then you should take the vernacular meaning of "gap" too, as opposed to the academic definition of "gap" which has supposedly been misused. If you accept that the word "chasm" has been used in the vernacular way, then it clearly hasn't been misused in that way.

@Kevin To me, this answer is like if the columnist had written that "Jupiter is 1.9 * 10^27 kg heavy", and then someone criticised them for misusing the term "weight", which in its technical meaning is a force measured in Newtons, not kilograms. But the word they said is "heavy", so how is that a misuse of a different word?

@Kevin I'm not talking about whether or not the Guardian piece is misleading, I'm talking about this answer, which is a criticism of the Guardian piece. To me, the criticism does not make sense, for the reason I've stated. The reason I haven't engaged with your point about the original piece being misleading, is because I'm commenting about this answer. This answer claims the author made a mistake, and I'm saying it is not a mistake to say you are measuring B and then give the measurement of B, just because other people would normally measure A.

But this answer treats it as if the author had tried to measure A and made a mistake doing so, neglecting the fact that the author described what he was measuring (B) and didn't report it as a measurement of A.

@kaya3 the author of the article uses the term "gender gap" as well as "gender chasm", and chasm is used as an intensifier.

@PeterCordes Whether or not it's sensible depends on a lot of things which aren't related to whether it's a statistical mistake. It can be understood as the difference in the (predicted) popular vote if only men voted (R+12) vs. if only women voted (D+21), which isn't nonsense in the strict sense of not meaning anything. (It might be nonsense in the sense that neither of those hypotheticals would ever happen.) The fact that it has a range of 200 follows from the fact that the (logically possible) popular vote outcomes have a range of 200 (R+100 vs D+100).

On whether it exaggerates more easily, I would say yes, for the simple reason that it tends to be "twice" the usually reported gap (not necessarily exactly double, but it is the sum of two gaps). On the other hand perhaps it is also more robust because it doesn't look at only one candidate. Imagine men and women both support the leading candidate equally, but they disagree about the second candidate. (Possible when there are undecided voters or more than two candidates.) Then the standard gap (difference in support for leading candidate) would be zero, which isn't necessarily a good summary.

@NoDataDumpNoContribution For presidential elections, yes. The article isn't claiming there is no issue with a wider gap.

@kaya3 I'm not saying that metric is a bad metric. I'm saying that it isn't the gender gap, by the usual definition of that term. I'm also saying which metric is used doesn't change the answer to this question.

@haxor789 There doesn't seem to be reporting of exit poll by demographics for many before 1980, and they were all fairly close

@komodosp no, that would be a gap of 25, with the direction from the winner. 33 comes from adding the magnitude of the Harris gap (+18) to the magnitude of the Trump gap (-15). Dividing by two doesn't get you either of those values. You get a 0 if an equal proportion of men and women prefer the leading candidate (before the result) / winner (after the result). E.g. in 1976 Carter won with a gender gap of 0, as he was 50-48 among both men and women

@komodosp that part of my answer is addressing calling it "the gender gap", which does have an academic description. I've re-arranged the answer to put that later than directly answering the question that was asked.

Your edit doesn't fix the factual problem in this answer, which is that you claim the columnist calls his figure a "gender gap", when that term is not used alongside the "33 points" figure. The quote from the column is "a gender chasm of 33 points", not "a gender gap of 33 points". The words "the gender gap" which you quoted only appear 13 paragraphs later at the end of the column, still not referencing the 33 points figure; "gender gap" (without "the") appears once elsewhere in the first paragraph, to say this term is inadequate (before using the other term "chasm" in the next paragraph).

You can argue that readers might miss the distinction and think 33 points is the gender gap - a valid criticism, and definitely worth pointing out in your answer - but factually, the author did not call the 33 points figure a gender gap.

@kaya3 The author uses the term "gender gap" in his opening paragraph. 'As it is, the two are clashing in an election marked by a gulf so wide, the phrase “gender gap” doesn’t do it justice.' That's the setup for calling 33 the gender chasm

@Caleth Yes, and as I said, that usage of the term is not attached to the 33 points figure. It is not even in the same paragraph. To say that it "doesn't do it justice" means the author is stating his intention not to use that term. As I said, it's valid to point out that this is misleading, but if you read the article as it's written, the 33 points figure is never described as a gender gap. If it had been, that would have been a mistake, but it wasn't. Your answer claims the opposite, and quotes the phrase "the gender gap", where that quote doesn't even appear in that first paragraph.