Turns out that the gender gap is the fault of women.

Specifically, quitting after being rejected.

Probably it is still men's fault for creating a society blah, blah, blah...

Or maybe testosterone?

"After running the experiment, we ended up with some rather surprising results. Contrary to what we expected (and probably contrary to what you expected as well!), masking gender had no effect on interview performance with respect to any of the scoring criteria (would advance to next round, technical ability, problem solving ability). If anything, we started to notice some trends in the opposite direction of what we expected: for technical ability, it appeared that men who were modulated to sound like women did a bit better than unmodulated men and that women who were modulated to sound like men did a bit worse than unmodulated women. Though these trends weren’t statistically significant, I am mentioning them because they were unexpected and definitely something to watch for as we collect more data."

Why you aren't hearing about ...

...the gender gap.

So why run yet another ad with the same ridiculous claims? Reinhard says the key is in swing-state polling — which shows Barack Obama’s big lead among women shrinking substantially:

A look at the dwindling gender gap in just one of the states where the ad is running gives it away. In Virginia — ground zero for the so-called “war on women” because of anti-abortion initiatives in the state capitol — Obama was running ahead of Romney in Quinnipiac University polls in March and June, largely because of monster leads among women. The gender gap was 13 points in March and 16 points in June.

Then came July’s survey, which found the candidates deadlocked at 44 percent each. The gender gap had shrunk to only 5 points.

In the latest week-long survey results (July 16-22) from Rasmussen’s daily presidential tracking poll, which sampled 3500 likely voters, the gender gap has fallen to five points (48/43) — but it’s only down to two points in today’s three-day rolling average (46/44). Meanwhile, Romney has a 13-point lead among men, 54/41, in today’s result, and a nine-point edge from the previous weeklong results, 50/41. When leaners are included in the three-day rolling average, Romney has a twelve-point lead among men, 55/43 — and a tie among women with Obama at 47/47. Among those women “certain” of their vote, Obama only has a one-point edge, 38/37. Among men certain of their vote, Romney leads by 14, 47/33.

Romney also leads the tracking poll overall by five points, 49/44 — and that was before today’s GDP report.

It seems that Team Obama has good reason to hit the panic button, and not just in Virginia. They need to scare women back onto the Democratic reservation, and setting their own pants on fire looks like their only option, now that “Julia” has been banished to the Island of Misfit Political Mascots.

In other news, you don't hear about the ozone hole because it's getting better. You probably also didn't hear about the so-called arctic ozone hole of 2011, because that one was caused by the fact that 2011 had record cold temperatures, which is strictly inadmissible for a narrative of global warming.