Pat Toomey is seeing some political benefits to his efforts to add a background checks amendment to this Senate gun bill:
Sen. Pat Toomey — the Pennsylvania Republican who helped lead the failed bipartisan background check proposal — has climbed to a record high approval rating in the Keystone State, according to a new poll on Friday.
Toomey has a 48 percent approval, his highest ever, and a 30 percent disapproval, the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute showed.
By a 54 percent to 12 percent margin, voters think more favorably of him because he co-sponsored with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) the failed Senate legislation that they say would have improved the federal background check system for firearms.
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Sixty-nine percent of Pennsylvania voters strongly support the failed legislation, 16 percent somewhat support it, 5 percent are somewhat opposed and 7 percent are strongly opposed, according to the poll.
Toomey will be up for re-election in 2016, a Presidential election year in a state that has gone for the Democratic President in six successive Presidential elections. While that’s still three years away, these numbers suggest that he has a shot of being in healthy shape by then notwithstanding the fact that conservatives nationally have distanced themselves from him because of the background checks bill.
