Nexus 7 rooting and battery life I rooted my new nexus 7 the other day using the Nexus Root Toolkit. 

Before rooting I was able to get about a full day out of a charge and still be at about 20-30% but now my battery seems to drain faster and even drain while I have the screen locked.

Can root affect battery life? Or could it be an application?
Rooting the Nexus 7 means that just some additional applications are installed, e.g. the su binary and the SuperSU app.

Both are not active in background, therefore I assume that your battery life problem is caused by a different app that had been updated or installed more or less at the same time.