Some say it could. The Las Vegas Sun reports that conservative scholar Charles Murray is warning the Republican party about the political damage the bill is going to do to them:

That’s the prognosis of poker-playing scholar Charles Murray, who warned in a recent newspaper opinion piece of the political damage Republicans may face from the nation’s poker-playing masses this fall. An estimated 8 million Americans gamble online.

“We are talking about a lot of people … who are angry enough to vote on the basis of this one issue, and they blame Republicans,” said Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, writing in The New York Times.

Just how big an effect does he think it will have?

Now millions of American gamblers are being shut out of popular sites that immediately closed their doors to U.S. players. Murray argued that based on his online talks with poker players, he’s willing to bet many of the “outraged millions” are Republicans and Reagan Democrats. He was not immediately available for comment.

“This law all by itself could add a few more Democratic congressional seats in the fall elections,” he wrote.

And a few more seats may be the difference between holding on to the House and losing control for the Republicans. 15 seats need to change hands for the Democrats to control the House. Murray isn’t alone. Radley Balko reports that the response to his recent Fox News column has been overwhelmingly against the bill and overwhelmingly from those who traditionally vote Republican but won’t this time because of this issue. He reprints the content of many of those emails.

So folks, if you want to stop this kind of nonsense in the future, not only should you vote on it, you should tell the exit pollsters that that’s why you voted. If the Republican party’s polling shows that this issue may have swung a few seats against them, they’ll think twice before doing it again.