Some Republican candidates ran for the hills after The Washington Post published an Oct. 7 story on lewd remarks made by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in 2005.

One of the first Republican senators to bolt was New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte.

Her gamble has so far not paid off. And it could serve as a warning to other GOP Senate and House candidates. The message is one of party unity: Hang together, or hang separately.

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The embattled Republican senator said she could no longer support Trump after the “hot mic” audio and video appeared from 2005.

Ayotte, locked in a tight race with Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan for re-election, then proceeded to drop Trump. It was a calculated attempt to separate herself from the nominee of her party.

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It backfired.

[lz_table title=”Recent N.H. Senate polls” source=”Real Clear Politics”]

Likely voters – October polls

|WMUR-UNH

Kelly Ayotte (R), 38%

Maggie Hassan (D), 46%

|Emerson College

Kelly Ayotte (R), 45%

Maggie Hassan (D), 45%

|WBUR-MassINC

Kelly Ayotte (R), 47%

Maggie Hassan (D), 47%

|UMass-Lowell – 7News

Kelly Ayotte (R), 45%

Maggie Hassan (D), 44%

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[/lz_table]

Ayotte, once leading Hassan in a poll released Oct. 13, has plunged and is 8 points behind.

A poll released Friday by WMUR and the University of New Hampshire shows Hassan leading with 46 percent of the vote. Ayotte trails with 38 percent of the vote.

Worse for Ayotte, her bolt from Trump has done nothing to raise her favorability ratings. They are down 6 points from August, according to the WMUR-UNH poll.

The WMUR-UNH poll finds only 39 percent of likely voters have a favorable opinion of Ayotte. Forty-five percent have an unfavorable opinion of her.

Meanwhile, Hassan floats well above her. The poll found 50 percent of New Hampshire likely voters say they have a favorable opinion of Hassan. Only 36 percent have an unfavorable opinion.

[lz_related_box id=”228722″]

To be fair, the WMUR-UNH poll may be an outlier. But Ayotte began to have polling trouble with other surveys after she dumped Trump. An Emerson College poll found the pair tied in a poll conducted from Monday to Wednesday.

WMUR’s poll director said the survey began polling three days after Ayotte announced that she was dropping her support for Trump.

And it found 82 percent of Trump supporters still back Ayotte. Among all self-identified Republicans, Ayotte is supported by 81 percent, WMUR reported.

So there is still hope for Ayotte to rebound if the 18-19 percent of Trump-backing Republicans forgive her abandonment of the party’s nominee.

But her gamble has so far not paid off. And it could serve as a warning to other GOP Senate and House candidates. The message is one of party unity: Hang together, or hang separately.