Sen. Kelly Ayotte, pays a price for her pro NRA vote

It's quite a while until the 2016 elections, naturally, but it's certainly not unheard-of for politicians to pay for their mistakes many years down the line. Could voting against expanded background checks for gun buyers turn out to be just that sort of high-priced error for Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte? The early verdict, certainly, is not good news for her. Public Policy Polling finds that Ayotte's job approval has cratered by 15 net points since they last checked in on her. In October, she sported a decent 48-35 score; now, she's in negative territory at 44-46. 

Of course, there could be many reasons for Ayotte's decline, but her "nay" vote on the Manchin-Toomey amendment to extend background checks to all commercial gun sales is almost definitely the highest-profile action she's taken in the last half a year. And like voters just about everywhere else, New Hampshirites strongly favor increased background checks, by a 75-21 margin. What's more, fully 50 percent say Ayotte's vote make them less likely to vote for her while just 23 percent say they're now more likely to do so.

Ayotte has to hope that ire over this vote fades with time, but it may not—this moment may wind up marking her permanently. And even though the issue won't make the same kind of headlines it has lately for the next three years straight, whoever Ayotte's opponent is in 2016 will be able to bludgeon her badly with her vote against common sense gun safety regulations that enjoy wide support. (In a hypothetical matchup, Gov. Maggie Hassan already holds a 46-44 edge on Ayotte.)

It's conventional wisdom to say that yeah, background checks poll well but the most intense voters are those who oppose them, which is in turn why it supposedly "makes sense" for politicians in red states to vote against them. But I think that view is stale, and I think there's a real anger among many Americans over Congress's failure to act here. A senator's job approvals don't plummet 15 points in the span of a few months unless people are genuinely pissed. And Ayotte doesn't represent a red state. I suppose we'll see in a few years' time, but I think the old calculus has been upended, and I don't think this one is going away.

P.S. Ex-Rep. Gabby Giffords's new group, Americans for Responsible Solutions, is already running radio ads criticizing Ayotte for her vote (and Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell as well). The two buys are reportedly for "several hundred thousand dollars."